fic
Much love and thanks to those who've been holding my hand.
Fair warning: thar be squalls ahead.
Divergence
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Justin turns twenty-four and eight months and Brian can no longer ignore the reality of his life.
The surgery and resulting chemotherapy are scheduled and Justin gets a pinched look around his mouth whenever Brian talks about it. Brian starts to talk about it more just so he can watch Justin’s mouth turn white at the corners. Then he feels guilty for instigating, which eventually turns into anger, and a new round of arguing starts.
Brian’s tired of it.
“Listen,” he says to Justin, who sits across from Brian’s desk in his new leased office, “I’m not going to say this again. So open up those pretty ears in that pretty head and fucking listen.”
Justin looks up from the rough sketch he’s drawing of the California Kinnetik logo. “Listen to what?”
“To me. To what I’m going to tell you, because goddammit all, Justin, if I can’t count on you for this, then I’m packing up all of my shit tonight and moving back to goddamn Pittsburgh.”
Justin raises an eyebrow and remains silent.
“I have stage three colon cancer. I have to have surgery to remove one and a half inches of my colon, followed by eight fucking months of chemotherapy, at which time I will most likely lose all the hair on my head. I need you to treat this like reality, Justin, like it’s really going to happen, instead of pretending that I’m some fucking superhero like your comic and the powers of my homosexuality will beat the illness.” Brian stands and places his hands flat on the surface of his desk.
Justin looks at him, pencil still poised in his right hand, tip still touching paper. “I know it’s reality, Brian,” he says slowly. “I live with you. I see the goddamn vitamins and the medicines and all the other crap the doctor piles on you.”
“But you aren’t looking at me!” Brian shouts, startling them both. “You have to look at me, Justin, you have to equate all the goddamn information you look up on the internet every night – oh, Jesus, don’t look so surprised, I know what you’re doing online – with me. All the not-pretty shit you read about is going to happen to me.”
“Not necessarily,” Justin says, and it only infuriates Brian more.
“Justin,” he grinds out, in an effort to remain calm, “you have to deal with it. Because if you don’t deal with it now, you’re going to fall apart like some fucking pussy later, and if that happens, I will freak the fuck out. ”
It’s the closest he can come to admitting to the boy in front of him that he needs him, and Brian’s jaw starts to ache from clenching.
Justin blinks twice and Brian can practically hear the wheels in his head turning. “It’s always all about you,” he says with a ghost of a smile, and Brian lets out the breath he’s been holding for weeks.
* * *
It gets better for Brian after that. Mentally, in any case, because physically, his life turns to shit and he wonders why all cancer patients don’t just off themselves and be done with it.
Having to take laxatives and an enema the night before surgery does nothing to lighten his mood, even when Justin tries to play naughty nurse. “I think not,” Brian snaps at him when he waves the tube in the air. He grabs it from Justin and slams the bathroom door in his face and figures that some indignities just have to be endured alone.
The surgery is completed and “roughly successful”, according to the doctor, and although Brian doesn’t want to know how rough is roughly, Justin does.
“What’s that mean,” he demands the day after surgery when the doctor comes in to peruse Brian’s chart. “Why wasn’t it just plain ‘successful’?”
The doctor makes noises about bleeding and leakage and all the horrible side effects that Brian has already read about ten times, and Justin gets a mutinous look on his face. “That won’t happen,” he tells the doctor, and Brian rolls his eyes.
* * *
Radiation treatment has nothing on chemotherapy, Brian discovers.
“Once a week for the first four months,” his doctor tells him over the rim of his glasses. “Then possibly once every other week after that. We’ll see.”
Brian tells Justin to fuck off, no, Justin isn’t taking a day off work just to drive him to the fucking hospital to watch poison be pumped into his veins.
Justin disagrees. Vehemently. “You’re an ass,” he tells Brian, and snatches the keys from his hand. “Are you insane? This isn’t like radiation, Brian, where you can waltz out of the doctor’s office and have a good two hours before you start feeling sick. Chemo’s different.”
“How would you know?” Brian makes a grab for the keys but misses.
“You said it yourself, you saw me reading all that shit on the net. I did research, okay, when you were out busy getting sucked or something!” The indignant look on his face is enough to make Brian laugh.
“Oh, poor, hen-pecked Justin,” he coos, and ruffles Justin’s hair. “Worried about me puking on your sweater?”
“I’m wearing yours,” Justin replies blithely, and walks out the front door holding Brian’s car keys.
Six hours later, cheek pressed against the bathroom floor and his lunch in the toilet, Brian hazily thinks that maybe Justin better drive him the next time, too.
The only single saving grace about the entire thing is the fact that Brian does not lose his hair. He expects to, of course, and every morning he searches his pillow and the shower drain for dark clumps, but they never appear. Justin seems more relieved than he is.
“There’s different kinds of drugs now,” he informs Brian after examining one of his endless websites. Brian's sort of tired of seeing “cancer” in his list of computer bookmarks, but lets Justin have his fun.
“Thank God for small favors,” he mutters, and avoids looking at his wan reflection in the mirror.
* * *
“You may resume normal sexual activity after six weeks,” his doctor tells him cheerfully at his one month checkup.
“There’s nothing normal about my sexual activity,” Brian remarks dryly.
“You’re a gay man, Mr. Kinney. The reality is that you won’t be able to have anal intercourse for six weeks.” The doctor looks neither uncomfortable nor embarrassed, and Brian wonders to how many gay men he’s had to say the same thing.
“I don’t have anal intercourse. I give it.” He ignores Justin’s cough from the chair in the corner.
“Regardless,” the doctor says, and Brian thinks he gives Justin a sidelong glance, “no sex. Two more weeks.”
“Guess I’ll just puke and sleep to pass the time, then,” Brian says. “Nothing different than the past month.”
“See you next week, Mr. Kinney.”
* * *
One of the things Brian loves the most about California – and the place where his disease doesn’t fucking matter – is the beach. He spends long hours in the sun despite Justin’s protests to use a good sunscreen.
“You think I’m worried about skin cancer?” he asks, squinting up at Justin from his towel on the sand. Justin concedes his point.
The sun turns Brian’s skin golden and smooth and adds natural highlights to his hair. Brian finds them spending more and more time there, and he goes alone with his laptop when Justin has to teach. Sand becomes a permanent accessory on their kitchen floor.
“I want you to throw my ashes in the ocean,” he finds himself saying one lazy afternoon when the tide is low and the seagulls circle. “I want it to be tragic and sad.”
Justin’s pencil stills over his sketchpad. “You mean, when you’re like, ninety years old? You’ll be all shriveled by then. You’ll barely make enough ashes to fill a matchbox.”
“My dick alone could fill an urn,” he replies, and turns to his back. “And ninety’s pushing it a little.”
“Eighty, then,” Justin says determinedly, and doesn’t look at him.
“Justin,” he says to the sky, “you promised.”
“So did you,” Justin whispers back, and Brian barely hears him over the waves.
* * *
Eight months of treatment slides into ten, and then twelve, and Brian looks at his calendar and realizes it’s been three fucking months since he’s even been to his office or the gym or anywhere that isn’t his bedroom or the hospital.
He can’t remember the last time Justin hasn’t looked at him with red-rimmed eyes and a crease between his brows.
He doesn’t know the last time he had a meal that didn’t taste like charcoal in his mouth.
He can’t recall the last time he even sat behind the wheel of a car.
But the one thing Brian does recall with stunning clarity is the last time he fucked his partner, and it plays out in his head a lot. Brian uses it as sort of a “comfort zone” kind of thing, something one of the nurses had suggested during a particularly bad bout of vomiting after treatment. “Find a place in your head that’s yours,” she suggested, while handing him a cup of ice chips. “Think of something that’s pure pleasure, something no one can take away from you. It’ll help, I promise.”
And it does. Brian thinks of it often, regardless of how he feels. They had fucked in the living room and then in the shower, sliding against each other with soap and conditioner making everything slick and warm and sudsy, and Justin standing spread-eagled against the tile. Brian had lubed both of them up so thoroughly that he didn’t even have to push to get in, just one tiny little nudge and he sort of slid into Justin with the tiniest of thrusts.
Brian remembers Justin’s half-breath, half-sigh; it had reverberated in the small glass shower space and come back around to fill Brian’s ears, and Justin had reached down to squeeze Brian’s thigh with urgent fingers. The water had rained down, leaving tiny pools in the hollow between Justin’s neck and shoulder, and Brian leaned over to close his lips around the space. Justin had tilted his head then, allowing Brian more access, and he began to suckle the skin to bring blood to the surface and leave its mark.
Justin reached around, Brian remembers, and captured one of Brian’s hands. He had put Brian’s hand on his cock while Brian took his time with slow, measured strokes, and Justin began to thrust into Brian’s fingers. “Now,” Justin had murmured, and then again. “Now, right now.” And without warning, Brian had come instantly, only vaguely aware of Justin shuddering under him at the same time.
Justin had turned around and taken Brian’s condom off while Brian stood and let him, his hands trembling, and Brian remembers kissing Justin under the spray until it turned cool. “You’re so fucking hot,” Justin had said, and Brian searched his face for any signs of facetiousness. He didn’t detect any false compliments, only honesty, and Brian found himself grateful.
It had been nine weeks.
* * *
He finds himself hospitalized when he gets strep throat and the doctor discovers he doesn’t have enough white blood cells to fight off infection. Neutropenia, they all call it, but by now Brian doesn’t give a fuck what the hell is wrong with his useless body. He’s tired.
Justin spends days next to his bed, leaving only to find food that he won’t eat or sodas he doesn’t drink. Brian wants to tell him that Justin’s getting too skinny to fuck, and then realizes the irony and doesn’t say anything at all.
He remembers his business every once in a while and tries to ask how Kinnetik’s faring. “Am I bankrupt?” he whispers one afternoon, and Justin looks over from the television that he’s watching with no sound.
“Yeah, you’re destitute,” Justin answers with a wan smile. “I let it all go to shit and spent your money.”
Brian’s just thankful that Justin still knows how to respond to him, and closes his eyes.
He’s tired.
* * *
The fourth night in the hospital, Brian comes wide awake and sits straight up in bed. Justin looks up from whatever he’s doodling and frowns. “What’s wrong?”
“I want to get up,” he tells Justin, “I want to look out the fucking window.” He throws back the covers and makes a move to get out of bed, conveniently forgetting that he hasn’t stood on his own in four days.
“Wait, why?” Justin’s sketch drops to the floor, forgotten, and he bolts to the side of the bed. “Slow down, hold on. What the fuck, Brian, tell me what’s the matter!”
“Nothing’s the matter,” Brian snaps at him, and his voice sounds hoarse in his ears. “I just want to look out the goddamn window! ” And he can’t explain it any more than that, just the sudden, compelling urge to see the outside, even if it’s only the parking lot with endless rows of cars and palm trees.
“Okay, okay,” Justin says hurriedly, “here, hold on to me. Slow down, you’re going to fall. Is the floor cold? You want slippers?”
Brian ignores his nervous chatter and takes the six steps to the window, leaning heavily on the sill with both hands and studying the sky. He can barely see the sun slipping down, and wishes he was watching it at the beach instead of a sterile, cold sickroom. But it’s enough, and all at once the crushing weight on his chest is gone, and he sighs.
He turns back to bed on his own, with Justin hovering right behind, and manages to slide under the blankets. “Okay,” he says to Justin, and smiles. “Okay.”
“Brian,” Justin says, his voice catching. “Brian, you’re fine. You’re okay. Right?” He turns around and drags his chair closer to the bed, sitting on the edge and catching Brian’s hand in his own. Brian opens heavy eyes to look at him.
“Yeah, I’m fucking perfect,” he answers, and just wants to sleep.
“You’re okay, you’re good,” Justin continues, and Brian doesn’t have to open his eyes again to know he’s crying. Justin’s probably spent the last month crying.
“You’re good,” Justin repeats, “you’re fine. We didn’t go through all the crap of being apart for you not to be fine, it’s fine. Everything’s good.”
Brian wants to tell him that he’s repeating himself and it’s getting boring but doesn’t have the heart. Or the energy. So he pries his eyes open once more and focuses on Justin’s face, ignoring the way his eyes shine with tears and his nose runs. “Yeah, Sunshine,” he manages. “Everything’s good.”
to be continued
Fair warning: thar be squalls ahead.
Divergence
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Justin turns twenty-four and eight months and Brian can no longer ignore the reality of his life.
The surgery and resulting chemotherapy are scheduled and Justin gets a pinched look around his mouth whenever Brian talks about it. Brian starts to talk about it more just so he can watch Justin’s mouth turn white at the corners. Then he feels guilty for instigating, which eventually turns into anger, and a new round of arguing starts.
Brian’s tired of it.
“Listen,” he says to Justin, who sits across from Brian’s desk in his new leased office, “I’m not going to say this again. So open up those pretty ears in that pretty head and fucking listen.”
Justin looks up from the rough sketch he’s drawing of the California Kinnetik logo. “Listen to what?”
“To me. To what I’m going to tell you, because goddammit all, Justin, if I can’t count on you for this, then I’m packing up all of my shit tonight and moving back to goddamn Pittsburgh.”
Justin raises an eyebrow and remains silent.
“I have stage three colon cancer. I have to have surgery to remove one and a half inches of my colon, followed by eight fucking months of chemotherapy, at which time I will most likely lose all the hair on my head. I need you to treat this like reality, Justin, like it’s really going to happen, instead of pretending that I’m some fucking superhero like your comic and the powers of my homosexuality will beat the illness.” Brian stands and places his hands flat on the surface of his desk.
Justin looks at him, pencil still poised in his right hand, tip still touching paper. “I know it’s reality, Brian,” he says slowly. “I live with you. I see the goddamn vitamins and the medicines and all the other crap the doctor piles on you.”
“But you aren’t looking at me!” Brian shouts, startling them both. “You have to look at me, Justin, you have to equate all the goddamn information you look up on the internet every night – oh, Jesus, don’t look so surprised, I know what you’re doing online – with me. All the not-pretty shit you read about is going to happen to me.”
“Not necessarily,” Justin says, and it only infuriates Brian more.
“Justin,” he grinds out, in an effort to remain calm, “you have to deal with it. Because if you don’t deal with it now, you’re going to fall apart like some fucking pussy later, and if that happens, I will freak the fuck out. ”
It’s the closest he can come to admitting to the boy in front of him that he needs him, and Brian’s jaw starts to ache from clenching.
Justin blinks twice and Brian can practically hear the wheels in his head turning. “It’s always all about you,” he says with a ghost of a smile, and Brian lets out the breath he’s been holding for weeks.
* * *
It gets better for Brian after that. Mentally, in any case, because physically, his life turns to shit and he wonders why all cancer patients don’t just off themselves and be done with it.
Having to take laxatives and an enema the night before surgery does nothing to lighten his mood, even when Justin tries to play naughty nurse. “I think not,” Brian snaps at him when he waves the tube in the air. He grabs it from Justin and slams the bathroom door in his face and figures that some indignities just have to be endured alone.
The surgery is completed and “roughly successful”, according to the doctor, and although Brian doesn’t want to know how rough is roughly, Justin does.
“What’s that mean,” he demands the day after surgery when the doctor comes in to peruse Brian’s chart. “Why wasn’t it just plain ‘successful’?”
The doctor makes noises about bleeding and leakage and all the horrible side effects that Brian has already read about ten times, and Justin gets a mutinous look on his face. “That won’t happen,” he tells the doctor, and Brian rolls his eyes.
* * *
Radiation treatment has nothing on chemotherapy, Brian discovers.
“Once a week for the first four months,” his doctor tells him over the rim of his glasses. “Then possibly once every other week after that. We’ll see.”
Brian tells Justin to fuck off, no, Justin isn’t taking a day off work just to drive him to the fucking hospital to watch poison be pumped into his veins.
Justin disagrees. Vehemently. “You’re an ass,” he tells Brian, and snatches the keys from his hand. “Are you insane? This isn’t like radiation, Brian, where you can waltz out of the doctor’s office and have a good two hours before you start feeling sick. Chemo’s different.”
“How would you know?” Brian makes a grab for the keys but misses.
“You said it yourself, you saw me reading all that shit on the net. I did research, okay, when you were out busy getting sucked or something!” The indignant look on his face is enough to make Brian laugh.
“Oh, poor, hen-pecked Justin,” he coos, and ruffles Justin’s hair. “Worried about me puking on your sweater?”
“I’m wearing yours,” Justin replies blithely, and walks out the front door holding Brian’s car keys.
Six hours later, cheek pressed against the bathroom floor and his lunch in the toilet, Brian hazily thinks that maybe Justin better drive him the next time, too.
The only single saving grace about the entire thing is the fact that Brian does not lose his hair. He expects to, of course, and every morning he searches his pillow and the shower drain for dark clumps, but they never appear. Justin seems more relieved than he is.
“There’s different kinds of drugs now,” he informs Brian after examining one of his endless websites. Brian's sort of tired of seeing “cancer” in his list of computer bookmarks, but lets Justin have his fun.
“Thank God for small favors,” he mutters, and avoids looking at his wan reflection in the mirror.
* * *
“You may resume normal sexual activity after six weeks,” his doctor tells him cheerfully at his one month checkup.
“There’s nothing normal about my sexual activity,” Brian remarks dryly.
“You’re a gay man, Mr. Kinney. The reality is that you won’t be able to have anal intercourse for six weeks.” The doctor looks neither uncomfortable nor embarrassed, and Brian wonders to how many gay men he’s had to say the same thing.
“I don’t have anal intercourse. I give it.” He ignores Justin’s cough from the chair in the corner.
“Regardless,” the doctor says, and Brian thinks he gives Justin a sidelong glance, “no sex. Two more weeks.”
“Guess I’ll just puke and sleep to pass the time, then,” Brian says. “Nothing different than the past month.”
“See you next week, Mr. Kinney.”
* * *
One of the things Brian loves the most about California – and the place where his disease doesn’t fucking matter – is the beach. He spends long hours in the sun despite Justin’s protests to use a good sunscreen.
“You think I’m worried about skin cancer?” he asks, squinting up at Justin from his towel on the sand. Justin concedes his point.
The sun turns Brian’s skin golden and smooth and adds natural highlights to his hair. Brian finds them spending more and more time there, and he goes alone with his laptop when Justin has to teach. Sand becomes a permanent accessory on their kitchen floor.
“I want you to throw my ashes in the ocean,” he finds himself saying one lazy afternoon when the tide is low and the seagulls circle. “I want it to be tragic and sad.”
Justin’s pencil stills over his sketchpad. “You mean, when you’re like, ninety years old? You’ll be all shriveled by then. You’ll barely make enough ashes to fill a matchbox.”
“My dick alone could fill an urn,” he replies, and turns to his back. “And ninety’s pushing it a little.”
“Eighty, then,” Justin says determinedly, and doesn’t look at him.
“Justin,” he says to the sky, “you promised.”
“So did you,” Justin whispers back, and Brian barely hears him over the waves.
* * *
Eight months of treatment slides into ten, and then twelve, and Brian looks at his calendar and realizes it’s been three fucking months since he’s even been to his office or the gym or anywhere that isn’t his bedroom or the hospital.
He can’t remember the last time Justin hasn’t looked at him with red-rimmed eyes and a crease between his brows.
He doesn’t know the last time he had a meal that didn’t taste like charcoal in his mouth.
He can’t recall the last time he even sat behind the wheel of a car.
But the one thing Brian does recall with stunning clarity is the last time he fucked his partner, and it plays out in his head a lot. Brian uses it as sort of a “comfort zone” kind of thing, something one of the nurses had suggested during a particularly bad bout of vomiting after treatment. “Find a place in your head that’s yours,” she suggested, while handing him a cup of ice chips. “Think of something that’s pure pleasure, something no one can take away from you. It’ll help, I promise.”
And it does. Brian thinks of it often, regardless of how he feels. They had fucked in the living room and then in the shower, sliding against each other with soap and conditioner making everything slick and warm and sudsy, and Justin standing spread-eagled against the tile. Brian had lubed both of them up so thoroughly that he didn’t even have to push to get in, just one tiny little nudge and he sort of slid into Justin with the tiniest of thrusts.
Brian remembers Justin’s half-breath, half-sigh; it had reverberated in the small glass shower space and come back around to fill Brian’s ears, and Justin had reached down to squeeze Brian’s thigh with urgent fingers. The water had rained down, leaving tiny pools in the hollow between Justin’s neck and shoulder, and Brian leaned over to close his lips around the space. Justin had tilted his head then, allowing Brian more access, and he began to suckle the skin to bring blood to the surface and leave its mark.
Justin reached around, Brian remembers, and captured one of Brian’s hands. He had put Brian’s hand on his cock while Brian took his time with slow, measured strokes, and Justin began to thrust into Brian’s fingers. “Now,” Justin had murmured, and then again. “Now, right now.” And without warning, Brian had come instantly, only vaguely aware of Justin shuddering under him at the same time.
Justin had turned around and taken Brian’s condom off while Brian stood and let him, his hands trembling, and Brian remembers kissing Justin under the spray until it turned cool. “You’re so fucking hot,” Justin had said, and Brian searched his face for any signs of facetiousness. He didn’t detect any false compliments, only honesty, and Brian found himself grateful.
It had been nine weeks.
* * *
He finds himself hospitalized when he gets strep throat and the doctor discovers he doesn’t have enough white blood cells to fight off infection. Neutropenia, they all call it, but by now Brian doesn’t give a fuck what the hell is wrong with his useless body. He’s tired.
Justin spends days next to his bed, leaving only to find food that he won’t eat or sodas he doesn’t drink. Brian wants to tell him that Justin’s getting too skinny to fuck, and then realizes the irony and doesn’t say anything at all.
He remembers his business every once in a while and tries to ask how Kinnetik’s faring. “Am I bankrupt?” he whispers one afternoon, and Justin looks over from the television that he’s watching with no sound.
“Yeah, you’re destitute,” Justin answers with a wan smile. “I let it all go to shit and spent your money.”
Brian’s just thankful that Justin still knows how to respond to him, and closes his eyes.
He’s tired.
* * *
The fourth night in the hospital, Brian comes wide awake and sits straight up in bed. Justin looks up from whatever he’s doodling and frowns. “What’s wrong?”
“I want to get up,” he tells Justin, “I want to look out the fucking window.” He throws back the covers and makes a move to get out of bed, conveniently forgetting that he hasn’t stood on his own in four days.
“Wait, why?” Justin’s sketch drops to the floor, forgotten, and he bolts to the side of the bed. “Slow down, hold on. What the fuck, Brian, tell me what’s the matter!”
“Nothing’s the matter,” Brian snaps at him, and his voice sounds hoarse in his ears. “I just want to look out the goddamn window! ” And he can’t explain it any more than that, just the sudden, compelling urge to see the outside, even if it’s only the parking lot with endless rows of cars and palm trees.
“Okay, okay,” Justin says hurriedly, “here, hold on to me. Slow down, you’re going to fall. Is the floor cold? You want slippers?”
Brian ignores his nervous chatter and takes the six steps to the window, leaning heavily on the sill with both hands and studying the sky. He can barely see the sun slipping down, and wishes he was watching it at the beach instead of a sterile, cold sickroom. But it’s enough, and all at once the crushing weight on his chest is gone, and he sighs.
He turns back to bed on his own, with Justin hovering right behind, and manages to slide under the blankets. “Okay,” he says to Justin, and smiles. “Okay.”
“Brian,” Justin says, his voice catching. “Brian, you’re fine. You’re okay. Right?” He turns around and drags his chair closer to the bed, sitting on the edge and catching Brian’s hand in his own. Brian opens heavy eyes to look at him.
“Yeah, I’m fucking perfect,” he answers, and just wants to sleep.
“You’re okay, you’re good,” Justin continues, and Brian doesn’t have to open his eyes again to know he’s crying. Justin’s probably spent the last month crying.
“You’re good,” Justin repeats, “you’re fine. We didn’t go through all the crap of being apart for you not to be fine, it’s fine. Everything’s good.”
Brian wants to tell him that he’s repeating himself and it’s getting boring but doesn’t have the heart. Or the energy. So he pries his eyes open once more and focuses on Justin’s face, ignoring the way his eyes shine with tears and his nose runs. “Yeah, Sunshine,” he manages. “Everything’s good.”
to be continued