Midnight Whispers
QAF Brian and Justin Fanfiction
Author's Chapter Notes:

I know I didn't add to this for a long time. I'm very sorry, but my excuse is a good one: real life was shit for a little while. I'm writing every day again to get this story to you guys on a regular basis, since I AM aware of how sucky it is when an author just drops off the grid and stops posting.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Justin spent the next week and a half missing the hell out of Brian, but what with the way they’d last parted, going back to the loft simply seemed like too much of an emotional hill to climb. Brian didn’t like him the way he was now. Evan would reiterate that to Justin anytime he found himself doubting the severity of the impasse. Brian wanted him to change, and some things were simply impossible to change at this point. Or at least, that was what Evan and the more negative side of Justin’s own brain told him. And the longer he allowed himself to stay away on this premise, the more his emotional hill grew, until it resembled somewhat of a mountain.

 

Since the snowstorm, Justin had only seen the older man once, and it hadn’t exactly led to anything being moved forward or set backwards. All that seeing Brian that evening had resulted in, was Skylar Van Dorn going on and on about how awkward the encounter had been. Because he’d been there too, after all. It had begun as a business meeting between Justin and Brett Keller, to discuss the progress of a personal art commission for the director. But it had ended up being more about a rather intriguing job offer.

 

Brett wanted Justin to come and set up shop in Hollywood. He wanted to finance a gallery where the young man’s concept art could be showcased. Back from the meeting, Justin stood poised behind the work that would become the first piece in Brett’s collection of one-of-a-kind Taylor paintings, and what might become the first work displayed in the proposed Taylor showroom. Holy shit.

 

Skylar, however, seemed to take a keener interest in the meeting with Brian, than the one with Keller. “I can’t believe he didn’t say anything!” the auburn haired man said with relief once they’d returned to the studio. Skylar perched himself in one corner of the sofa. “I mean, what are the chances that you run into the man who was supposedly the love of your life, and he doesn’t say anything to try and… I don’t know, get you back?”

 

“Maybe it’s better that he didn’t.” Justin immediately picked up a paintbrush and some colors to mix, not eager to talk about the scene that had just played out. Besides, Brian wasn’t the love of his life. Not anymore. “I should have suggested another restaurant for our meeting,” Justin hedged. “Brian does business dinners at that place all the time. I just forgot.” Carefully continuing the line of one of Rage’s arms on the canvas before him, the young artist thought that Brian had probably looked about as furious as the depicted superhero on canvas, when he’d seen Justin come walking in with Skylar. “He seemed… unhappy,” Justin admitted. “We surprised him I guess.”

 

“He looked like he wanted to leap over the counter and murder me. I don’t think he likes us hanging out together.”

 

“Brian doesn’t get to decide how I live my life. He needs to wrap his head around that, or we can’t be together.”

 

 “But you miss him,” Skylar ventured.

 

Justin frowned at how much that simple statement rang true. Instead he replied, “You can’t miss someone you don’t care about.”

 

“But you DO care about him. You wouldn’t still be painting that ‘love song on canvas’ if you didn’t feel anything for him.” The redhead’s indication of the oil portrait of Brian did not go unrecognized by Justin. A knowing stare was fixed upon the latter as Skylar remarked, “You told me you’d gained more of your feelings back for him. I don’t understand why you won’t even try? Why are you avoiding him?”

 

“Why are you so nosy?” Justin countered grumpily. Giving up on his work for the night, he went and sat on the same couch as his friend and one time fuck. Sighing, he admitted, “I told Brian a bunch of shocking stuff about myself, and not in the most tactful way. We’re both on edge around each other now. Neither one of us knows what to say. Or really what to do.”

 

“So… an impasse then?”

 

Justin nodded unhappily. “You could say that.”

 

Both men sat on the couch and stared ahead to the six foot by three frame of a comic book page that would soon be shipped to Brett Keller’s Hollywood address. The very Hollywood where Justin had now been requested to return. The blonde honestly couldn’t believe how insanely generous the offer was. What was worse: he couldn’t believe he was having doubts about taking it. Justin ended up wandering to the kitchen to light a joint, returning to sit and offer half to Skylar. “Here.”

 

“Thanks.” Skylar’s drag was deep, his exhale long and not nearly as artful as Brian would have done it. “You’re thinking about going, aren’t you?” The redheaded man asked, returning the joint so that his friend could partake.

 

Justin stared down at his fingers and gave a begrudging gesture. “What can I say? The offer’s pretty damned amazing.” He inhaled and let the burn linger in his lungs. “Hard to refuse.”

 

Brett Keller was offering him the chance of a lifetime. A job working as a concept artist on Hollywood blockbusters was enough all on its own, but add to that a near guaranteed flow of art commissions, and a flipping showroom in a brand spanking new gallery, and it became pretty clear that this wasn’t a chance that would come around again in a lifetime. Well… Justin’s lips curled up, in a human lifetime anyway. Sitting there on the Ikea furniture, getting high with the man who’d driven both of them straight into a river and one of them into a coma, Justin couldn’t help but to replay the conversation he’d had with Brett over in his head:

 

They’d gone to a trendy steakhouse where the director had pushed the idea that Justin come live and work for him in California. He hadn’t minced words when Justin could only demure, pressing,

 

“Come on, it’s not as if you’ve got a ton of reasons to stick around here anyways. This town is dead, and not in any way that’s beneficial to you.” At the artist’s raised eyebrow, Brett had elaborated, “That Brian guy you were with is out of the picture, you said yourself that your family’s moved closer to my side of the country anyways, and besides that, there’s the whole vampire thing.”

 

“How does me being a vampire make California a good choice?” Justin challenged, ignoring the whole “Brian guy” comment. “Isn’t it the sunshine state?”

 

“That would be Florida. But the sun sets everywhere Justin. And you can bet that when it sets in Cali, there’s a hell of a lot more for someone like you to experience over there than there is here. Nobody jives with the vamps over here, you can’t have missed that.”

 

The statement had been provocative to say the least. “And what?” he’d countered, “People are so accepting over there?”

 

“Hey, haven’t you heard?” Brett grinned, “We’re all raving liberals. You’d get along just fine on the west coast.” One serious look later, he appealed, “You think about it: fabulous new life in Hollywood, or scrambling after the remnants of your old one here.” Sitting back with the air of finality that was so natural to him, the director had merely shrugged in a way that almost said he didn’t care. “Your choice,” he’d said.

 

The meeting had concluded shortly after that, with Justin and Skylar nearly walking smack into Brian and his business client on the way out the door. At first Brian had looked glad to see him. His face had softened almost imperceptibly as their eyes met. But once the older man had spotted Skylar, it had all gone sour. An unseemly encounter might have taken place, but for their hasty departure out the front doors. Sitting there remembering it, Justin had to repress a wince. Forget about it, he urged himself. That had been another incident altogether, and it was over. Justin forced himself to think about the possibility of Hollywood, not Brian. “Yeah, hard to refuse,” he repeated thoughtfully to Skylar. “I want to go. I just don’t know if I’ll be able to stop thinking about him if I do.” Justin cast his eyes down to the floor as he admitted, “I feel things towards him now. He still doesn’t know that. What if I take Brett’s offer and it turns out I was this close to falling back in love with Brian? To remembering everything?”

 

“You have to decide if that’s a risk worth taking, I guess.”

 

“I don’t know,” Justin fretted. “I just wish this thing with Brian had never started up again. If he’d stayed away after the accident then I’d never feel like… like I owe it to him to try and make it work.” What the blonde didn’t say was that he also felt like he owed it to himself to see things through with Brian as well. “And then there’s Evan, of course.”

 

Skylar snorted. “What about him? He’s a grown ass man who can take care of himself.”

 

Justin wasn’t so sure. “You didn’t say that about Brian.”

 

“Evan isn’t your boyfriend. He’s your roommate of two flipping months. You shouldn’t have to worry about how he’ll deal with you moving away.”

 

“I know that!” Justin insisted, but the thought of what Evan would actually do, or how he would fare if forced to face a reality without Justin in it, filled the young artist with trepidation. The wiry vampire had been extra clingy ever since the incident with Kai at the Krav Maga studio. He’d almost seemed to draw reassurance from the accident, as if it was just one more step in cementing his place in the world with Justin. “I don’t think he’d handle it… well if I left.” Despite Evan’s behavior, Justin knew he’d feel guilty for abandoning him on the east coast. Evan didn’t seem like the kind of person who could deal well with life on his own. Ruefully, Justin imagined packing the older vampire up in his suitcase with everything else and bringing him along like so much luggage.

 

“Well you’re going to have to figure out what you want. That Brett guy won’t wait forever on a nobody like you. He’s the big shit.”

 

Justin rolled his eyes. “I know.” Then again, he thought, in LA his lifestyle would be so much better. He could go out at night to clubs and bars without anyone giving him a second glance. Work wouldn’t be so difficult to coordinate, since unlike Pittsburgh,  L.A. never slept. Certain parts of the city were like Liberty Avenue for vampires. He could reinvent himself there. Shed his old life like dead skin and start from scratch. No excuses, no apologies, no regrets. Just like Brian always said. Justin blinked at the unanticipated thought. “God damn it! There I go thinking about Brian again,” he chuckled, glancing at Skylar. “I can’t leave him out of the equation, no matter how much I want to.”

 

“You should tell him then,” the redhead suggested, still smoking what was left of their joint. “Go see him.”

 

“I don’t even know…”

 

“Come on. I bet he misses you.”

 

“Brian would never miss anyone. And if he did he’d never admit to it,” Justin corrected, feeling almost fond as he thought of the obstinate older man. “I’m sure he’s doing just fine. Probably going on as usual; working like a dog, drinking like a fish, and fucking like a—

 

---

 

“Bunny!”

 

Brian watched with a self-satisfied smirk as his son splayed out on the floor ahead, trying to embrace the fluffy animal despite the fact that it didn’t seem to be too keen on being held. The thing was struggling with wild legs to heft itself over the trap of four-year old arms. So far, Gus was winning. Brian grinned while everyone else in the room pretty much just looked on, perplexed or pissed off. The gang was dispersed throughout the loft, having gathered for Brian’s declared “important meeting,” but they were currently more preoccupied by the highly unexpected thing that said man had done. He’d gone and bought Gus a pet rabbit. Surely this wasn’t why they’d all gathered so conspicuously on a Tuesday evening, was it?

 

“Daddy?” Wide, inquiring eyes that so mirrored Brian’s own shone up from the floor. “What’s his name?”

 

“Well Sonnyboy, I thought we’d call him Dracula.”

 

Gus repeated the name, while half the room winced. Lindsay could be heard making a sound of dismay at her friend’s provocative sense of humor. “Clever Brian,” she drawled.

 

“That’s not even funny.”

 

“What are you even trying to do here?”

 

The comments came, and Brian shrugged unapologetically. Emmett and Debbie—who had placed themselves side by side for this little get-together—shared a titter. At Ted’s raised eyebrow, Emmett quieted and muttered, “Well… we think it’s funny.”

 

“I just don’t get you sometimes Brian.”

 

“Jesus Christ people!” Brian suddenly burst forth, rising from his cross-legged position to stand before them all. “I bought the kid a freaking rabbit!” The impassioned man stared down at the creature with disdain. Brian had always suspected that he hated rabbits, but now he knew for sure. There it sat on the wood floor: dirty and malevolent. It was there to help him make a point, but the normally fastidiously-clean man couldn’t wait to have the animal out of his living space. “I mean, just look at it!” he exclaimed once again. “It bites and it sheds and it shits; and I’ve had it in this apartment for almost an entire day. This glorified oversized rodent. Nobody has anything to say about that. But I name it Dracula, and everybody has a reaction? Is the room so rife with Vampire-taboo tension that I can get a rise from you so easily?” Nobody answered him. They all seemed to freeze up at the outburst, not quite sure what Brian’s purpose was in this speech, though they all knew that he surely had one. Lindsay and Ben seemed to be the coolest cucumbers in the room as everybody else bit their lips or their fingernails at what would be said next. “If I mention Justin’s name, are you going to freak out too?” he asked.

 

“Told ya this was about him,” Hunter quipped from behind, where he was primarily glued to some game on the television’s Wii system. He seemed to be addressing Michael. “It so is. You owe me ten bucks.”

 

“God damn it Brian,” Melanie was complaining. “How selfish can you be? Do you have any idea how much work these things are to take care of? How much they shit?”

 

Brian nodded. Oh, he had learned. “That’s what backyards are for.”

 

“He can’t keep it. Are you going to be the one to explain it to him?” She fumed, sitting back with a huff when Lindsay quieted her. “Stupid shegetz.”

 

“Well, if things have deteriorated to the point of Yiddish slurs already, then I think it’s time we move on.” Straightening, Brian announced, “I didn’t invite you all here just for the thing”—at “thing,” he waved his hand vaguely in the direction of Gus and the rabbit. “You’re here because the liberty ‘gang’ needs an intervention.”

 

“Intervention?” Ted piped up, “Intervention for what?”

 

“Yes Theodore, we all realize this isn’t your first go-round with that sort of thing,” Brian snarked. Ted sat back with a resilient scowl. “It’s an intervention because you all are acting bat shit insane about the whole ‘Ohmygod Brian’s boyfriend got turned into a vampire’ thing, and it needs to stop.” Lord did it need to stop, he thought. If he was ever going to get Justin to assimilate back into real life, then half the blonde’s known world couldn’t keep treating him so strangely. It was damn counterproductive to Brian’s purposes. “So tonight we’re having a little remedial sensitivity training.” Brian fixed sharp eyes on Melanie, “Mel: you should pay extra close attention. It’s obvious you were absent when they taught this sort of stuff in grade school.” He received a rude gesture from the woman at that, but kept going, “Obviously, as you can all see: Justin isn’t living here anymore. As unfortunate as that is for him, that situation could change. But if I’m going to keep him around, you need to change too,” he asserted to each person seated before him. “You guys are awkward and you don’t know what to think or say, I get it. I was like that too, at first. But you can’t let assumptions and stereotypes color your opinions about Justin. I mean, we’re all a bunch of queers—you count too Debbie, don’t worry—so we should know better than to judge like that. Being all bent out of shape because he’s around Gus”—Brian glanced at Lindsay—“or because you think he’s going to hurt me”—a glance at Michael—“or because you just feel embarrassed or sorry for him”—a stern glance at nearly everyone in the room—“Isn’t okay. Grow up, suck it up, and learn to treat him like normal.

 

“But he’s not normal,” Michael was arguing. “How are we supposed to act like nothing’s happened? This was huge.”

 

Brian fixed the shorter man with a look of understanding. Maybe the first such look he’d awarded to anyone so far. Michael was his best friend. Brian had always been able to forgive him for the stuff that would earn others a character assassination. It was that unflagging soft spot that had him replying, “I know Mikey. And since, judging from everybody’s expression right now, this seems to be such a daunting request I’m making of you all, I’d like to introduce our guest speaker for the night.”

 

“Guest speaker?” Nearly three voices parroted back at him. “Brian,” this from Ted, “What are you doing?”

 

“I’m sensitive,” Deb was asserting, sounding nearly hurt. “I hired Sunshine’s little vampire friend at the diner, didn’t I? Don’t tell me about being fucking sensitive.”

 

“Ahem!” Brian waited until he had their attention again, then said, “I’d like you all to meet Aiden.”

 

“Who?”

 

Just then, they all saw him. From some inscrutable shadow in the bedroom, Aiden emerged, just on cue. The handsome vampire took steps down to the living area where they all were, joining Brian at the forefront. “Hello,” he offered assuredly. “That would be me.”

 

“Who’re you?” Hunter had finally turned around to ask, eyeing the man up as if he was walking money. From across the room, Ben and Michael shot the teen a warning look. “What?! I was just asking!”

 

Perhaps a bit puzzled, Aiden told them all, “I’m the resident vampire counselor at Pitt General. Brian thought it would be a good idea for me to come over and talk to you guys about what Justin has been going through.”

 

“You know Justin?” this from Melanie.

 

“You… did you make him a… you know.”

 

Aiden chuckled, and flowed right into his spiel about vampires and vampirism, and how neither was a dirty word. He talked, they asked questions, and he answered them with a winning smile. He had the gang at rapt attention within thirty seconds, the center of their attention.

 

Brian had to avoid making any off-putting postures or facial expressions as the other man took over his role as guest speaker. Despite the fact that he himself was the one who’d invited the vampire into his loft, the surly host couldn’t help his acerbic thoughts as he watched the man win over his friends so easily. Look at him, he thought, winning them over with his appropriate speech and his appropriate sweater and his general… appropriateness. Ugh. Nothing was more annoying than utterly appropriate people. Especially when he couldn’t ignore the fact that he was maybe a little jealous of said appropriate person.

 

Summarily, Aiden was the super-hot vampire who’d converted Justin and kept him close by for a month. Teaching him, mentoring him, doing god knows what to “comfort” him. He was Justin’s maker for Christ’s sake. Brian couldn’t help but to think of it as an incredibly intimate connection. The usually self-assured man hadn’t quite been able to extinguish that pilot light of jealousy that still burned at Aiden’s existence, but he could at least put off his dislike for the good of this meeting. Once the sensitivity training had begun, he slipped off to the side and sought isolation within the bathroom’s four walls.

 

---

 

He’d just lit a Newport when a distinctly lesbian-shaped shadow clouded through the screen partition of the door. “No, please, don’t,” he’d muttered around the cigarette with complete lack of conviction, as Lindsay insinuated herself into the bathroom. The blonde gave him a perceptive look and slid the door shut behind her. “They’re receiving quite the education out there.”

 

“Yeah? Why aren’t you out there receiving it too?” Brian murmured darkly. “You treated Justin like a piece of shit the last time he was here.”

 

Lindsay’s eyes lowered to the floor in acknowledgement, “Yes, I did do that. I’m sorry now though. You know I know better.”

 

Brian gave a grumpy nod, fully-aware of the reason that his friend had over-reacted. “But it was Gus.”

 

“But it was Gus. Irrational fears and,” she adeptly took the butt from Brian’s fingers, inhaling, “you know: blah, blah blah. Raving WASPy bitch overreacts yet again... I’d take it back if I could. I promise I’ll apologize when I see him next.”

 

“Good plan.”

 

“You didn’t have to get the rabbit though,” she scolded. “That’s going to be a disaster. I don’t expect you’d consider keeping it here.”

 

“You handle the rabbit, I’ll handle the vampire. Justin bites and sheds and poops enough on his own. I can’t handle taking care of two living things at the same time. I’ll be tapped out at one.”

 

Lindsay fixed Brian with a very particular look at the bizarrely-domestic reference to Justin. It was her “I’m going to give you some serious advice” look, and it had the dark-haired man sinking into himself like an insolent child. “If you want my honest advice,”

 

“Never said I needed it.”

 

“It’s that Justin needs to get used to us as much as we need to get used to him. And if you’re going to keep him in your life like you say you are, then you’re going to have to look out for his needs too Brian.”

 

Brian was incensed. “And what makes you think I wouldn’t?”

 

“You’re a self-serving person, first and foremost. And I know you,” she goaded. “You want him back like you had him before, but maybe that’s not fair. I don’t know Justin now like you do, but I do know that he’s changed, and I also know that everybody comes to a point where they have to make concessions for the ones they love.”

 

For a moment, Brian’s eyes regarded her with a hint of something more than fondness. “Concessions,” he repeated. “Like you did for me?”

 

The blonde sighed. “Yes, like we did for each other.” Her words evoked a soft smile from the other man, as they each contemplated the companionship that, had it not been for conflicting orientations, could have been so much more. Placing a hand on her oldest friend’s shoulder, Lindsay said, “You’re my true love, Brian Kinney. But you’re a gay man and I’m a dyke. No way was that gonna work out. But this can,” she urged. “From what you’ve told me, he’ll take any excuse you provide to run away from this. So this time you’re going to have to be the one to save things.”

 

Brian snorted. “I know. That’s the crazy part.” He pulled Lindsay close and pressed their foreheads together, making her promise, “No more weirdness. No more treating him like that. Not from you or anyone else.” Privately, he really hoped that Aiden was able to achieve some major reeducation out in the living room, because with the things Justin had admitted to him about his new state of being, Brian wasn’t sure he could handle one more ounce of weirdness anymore. Pulling things back together the way they were supposed to be was going to be hard enough without the Liberty Gang’s added faux pas, after all.  “He won’t rip you to shreds if you don’t do it to him.”

 

“No more weirdness,” she promised, squeezing his hand. Brian flushed the remnants of the cigarette down the toilet, and together they made their way back out into the living room-turned reeducation camp.

 

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