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

Here's the last chapter :) Thanks everyone for your wonderful comments. I love each of them.

Also, I'm writing a book right now with characters inspired by Brian and Justin. I'm always looking for readers who would tell me their opinion, so if you're interested, just PM me :) And Jessica, thank you again!

Chapter three: Brian

 

 

31.

 

When the boy left him, Brian tried to lose himself in sex and drugs, and dreams. Dreams about evenings spent together, dreams about cuddling and watching bad TV shows and laughing. Dreams about making love.

He'd never thought he could miss someone that fiercely.

 

 

***

 

His blond didn't come back. The days kept passing, blurring, but there was nothing, not a word, not a phone call. Brian was getting desperate.

Sometimes he wondered what would have happened if he'd asked the boy to show his wrist. What would have happened if the name on it wasn't ‘Brian'.

He would have probably lost his mind.

But it didn't matter, did it? Because soulmates were bullshit, Brian still believed in it.

He only wished his nameless boy was with him, listening to his complaints and smiling like he held all answers in the world.

 

 

***

 

The more miserable Brian became, the more furious Michael got. One night, after another fruitless argument, he jumped to Brian and grabbed him by his bracelet, tearing it from his wrist. He stared, speechless, at the word ‘Justin' on it, then looked at Brian. His eyes were watery, his breathing came out in sharp, shallow rasps.

"Why?" he whispered. "Why didn't you tell me? All these years, I hoped..."

"You hoped what?" Brian spat. "That you and I will ride off into the sunset and live happily ever after? Are you even serious, Michael? I told you from the beginning that the name on my wrist wasn't yours, it's your fault if you chose not to believe me."

"But you knew I kept hoping!" Michael yelled, clenching his fists. "You knew I didn't believe you, that I still hoped, and you let me do that! You let me live like that, you took my chance to find a real soulmate from me! Always keeping me close but not too close, always giving me some... some scraps of your affection and watching how pathetically grateful I was for them!" 

"You are my friend," Brian said dully. "My best friend. I always loved you. I'm sorry if it's not enough."

Michael fell silent after that, still looking like he wanted to cry.

"Why the hell did you push HIM away if he's the one you really want?" he finally asked. And Brian flinched, because talking about his blond was unbearable. Because memories were still plaguing him, still tearing him apart, and he was starting to forget his reasons for ruining the relationship he'd longed for as a child.

"I don't know," he whispered. "I don't know." 

 

 

***

 

Michael came back the next day, excited and seemingly forgetting about harsh words exchanged yesterday. He babbled and showed Brian his wrist, where the lonely ‘B' had turned into ‘Benjamin'.

Brian didn't feel happy. He didn't feel upset. He felt nothing at all at the news, and Michael noticed it and sighed and called him an asshole. Then he hugged him like before, like all times when Brian needed him, and said.

"If he's the one for you, get him back."

"I don't even know his name," Brian replied bitterly.

"Does it matter?" Michael pulled back to look at him. "You love him. You will love him no matter what his wrist or his birth certificate says."  

 

 

***

 

Brian thought about it. In the end, he agreed with Michael.

But it didn't mean he was going to do anything. He had been happy before, and he could be happy again. He didn't need anyone for it. He didn't.

 

 

***

 

 

One day Brian saw his blond on the street - he was leaving the shop with a grocery bag, looking sad and dejected. Brian stopped and watched him, unable to look away, and the thoughts of miss him, need him, want to try again filled his head, refusing to go away.

He went back home, but he didn't even remember doing it.

He kept thinking.

 

 

***

 

 

After that, Brian had gotten obsessed. He'd turned into a stalker, into a creepy kind where he kept sitting in the car in front of the boy's house, greedy for the smallest glimpse of him. He followed him to work and followed him back home, watching over him, admiring him from afar.

He stopped fighting the feeling of longing. It was hopeless anyway.

When he saw his blond in the arms of another man, he wanted to die. Then he wanted to get out of the car and to pummel the man into the ground, but fears and insecurities came back with full force, paralyzing him.

What if the name on the boy's wrist wasn't his? What if he'd met his real soulmate and forgot all about Brian? Their relationship had been one-sided - the blond had kept giving, while Brian had given very little back.

Was it worth getting hurt over it eventually? When some other person could still come into picture, when his blond could still decide he was better off and leave him to rot alone?

If Brian had given himself to him, if he had given his heart, his devotion, his everything, for him it would have been forever. But it wouldn't have been forever for the boy, not when he was just nineteen years old.

Brian had always imagined his soulmate older, stronger, more cynical. After the coach he'd stopped imaging altogether, and now he knew why. No imagination could come up with someone as perfect as the boy - his artistic, loving, genuine, inventive boy who brightened his life and who had left emptiness behind, after he left.

Brian needed the boy, but he didn't want to need him. He hated that feeling, so once again he left, swearing to himself that he wouldn't be back.

 

 

***

 

Brian was thirty one when he realized he was full of shit.

 

 

***

 

 

Not caring that it was the middle of the night, he drove back to the house where his blond had rented an apartment. Anxiety, hope, adrenaline were coursing through his veins, causing his body to tremble, his hands to shake.

Brian got out of the car, staring intently at the third floor, at the windows that he knew belonged to his boy.

Not, not to ‘his boy'. To Justin.

"Justin," he said out loud, tasting the word for the first time in many years.

"Justin," he repeated, savoring it.

"Justin!" he shouted, as loudly as his lungs allowed. "Justin! JUSTIN!"

The curtains finally moved, and for a moment Brian stopped breathing. Justin's sleepy face was the most beautiful sight imaginable.

"Brian?" he murmured, squinting. "What's wrong, why are you..." His eyes widened when he realized how Brian called him, and Brian smiled, feeling childishly, genuinely elated.

He was right. His blond was Justin.

His Justin.

"Well?" he asked. "Will you come downstairs, or should I wake the rest of your neighbors?"    

A wide grin split Justin's face. Even from here Brian could see how his blue eyes lip up, and then he moved away from the window.

Logically Brian understood that he was probably coming outside, coming to him, but his stupid heart started pounding at a sickening rate, still worried, still anxious.

In the next second the door was opening and Justin was rushing to him, smiling and shining and so breathtaking, so his.

The kiss felt like being reborn. Like being able to breathe after nearly drowning.

Brian hugged him tight, nuzzling his hair, breathing in his scent again and again.

"I love you," he said. "Do you hear me? I love you."

Justin didn't answer, and when Brian started to panic, thinking too late, too late, too late, Justin shifted in his arms, stepped away and then hesitantly offered him his wrist.

Brian froze. And stared. He thought of what he'd felt seeing ‘Marissa' on the coach's wrist. How disappointment was so bitter that it had nearly crushed him.

Then he remembered that he didn't care, so he gently touched the offered wrist and carefully removed the wristlet from it.

Brian had never thought he could fall in love with his own name.

 

 

***

 

 

Justin was possessive of his wrist. When they were walking down the street, Justin's fingers kept tracing the letters on Brian's skin, as if making sure they were really there.

Brian laughed at him for that and pretended to huff and shake his head in annoyance, but he often caught himself caressing Justin's wrist in return, staring at it in a disgustingly besotted way.

Others - other people who still wore wristlets - looked at them with derision, murmuring how even the greatest fell, but Brian just smiled.

He was happy. There was nothing he had to prove.

 

 

32.

 

They had fights. Justin wanted things to constantly change while Brian preferred them to remain as they were, but every argument, even the most severe, always ended with kisses, apologetic murmurs and wild make-up sex.

After the fourteenth time Justin stormed out from the loft, Brian glanced at the calendar and realized they had spent a year officially living together. One amazing, deliriously happy year.

He decided to count every year they spent like that.

 

38.

 

Brian was thirty eight when he stopped counting.

 

 

The end

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