Erin
I'm not sure what this is or where it is going, I have been playing with it for far too long. In summary, it is post season four, absolutely no spoilers for season five. And in summary...Justin dreams about killing Brian.
Enough...on with the show...HAPPY BIRTHDAY PADDIES!!!
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LA is an alien wonderland littered with false pretense, lines of cocaine on every flat surface and more hot ass than I have the energy to explore. I wander through the sun-soaked streets and get blinded by the blond heads and the crisp, baked chicken skin brown tans. I pass nameless faces with outstretched hands that offer something that looks otherworldly. Everything is shiny and beautiful and perfect and irresistible, but I know it will kill me in the end.
So I finish what I came to do, and I go home.
I didn’t know being without him would be so hard. I didn’t know I could miss someone’s presence so intensely that it would shake me out of daydreams. I didn’t know I could crave someone’s touch so severely that I’d wake whimpering in the night. I couldn’t have known that the love would grow deeper over the miles and across the space and in spite of the separation.
But it has, so I return to claim it.
***
“Oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck,” I can hardly breathe. I had to forget how intense this was just to live without it.
“Glad to see Hollywood has increased your vocabulary,” he grunts and his teeth come down hard at the top of my spine. I hear the door creak open. The sound of streaming piss and the smell of urinal cakes is somehow nostalgic. This indicates we’ve fucked in public restrooms too many times. I consider turning my face to watch the crowd that is inevitably watching us, but I’m too busy concentrating on how the old, hazy mirror distorts Brian’s lips and eyes and jaw and makes him, impossibly, more beautiful.
“Fuckin’ Christ,” I jerk as come and he digs his fingers into my hips to hold me closer, getting the maximum benefit of the contractions. I laugh and sigh and I feel silly – almost child like, vulnerable I guess. He comes a moment later and breaks the skin where his teeth rest on my spine. I arch back and reach around to hold him close to me.
“Not yet,” I mutter as he starts to move away. He pulls out anyway and yanks my pants up. I lean over to brace myself on my knees. When I catch my breath I stand up and wash my hands, splashing some water on my face. I run damp hands through my hair and watch Brian primp in the mirror. I look used, skin blotchy and face puffy and bruises blooming on my neck. He looks…perfect.
I laugh out loud and he smirks at me, “What?”
“You just...you look…” I start to stammer so I stop talking.
His smile grows and he snakes an arm around my waist, pulling me close to him. He stares at my reflection in the mirror for a minute; my cheeks grow a deep shade of red. Then he turns his head to look at me directly. He leans down to whisper in my ear, “I’ll leave my dick in you all night, just not when we’re in the fucking john at Woody’s. Let’s go home.”
I nod and let him lead me out of the restroom. We pass the guys at the pool table on the way; I give a few quick hugs as Brian drags me by my belt loops out the door.
He asks about my flight on the drive home, he was surprised I didn’t tell him to get me at the airport. It’s a Friday night and I figured it’d be more fun to track him down and surprise him. He says little else, there’s just a lot of smiling, a warm and familiar hand on my thigh and a feeling filling up my insides that I’d forced myself to forget. It’s like a drug, the way I feel around him, and I crave it…I need it. I was a mess without it for all these months. Withdraw sucks.
The loft looks the same, save for a new desk lamp and a few new kitchen appliances. I walk around and run my hands over familiar surfaces. I sit at his desk, stand at the windows, lie on the bed. He watches me as I slowly and carefully drink in the lines and details and curves and nuances of the space. It’s only been four or five months since I visited last, feels like more than a lifetime and less than a moment all at once. In the bathroom I open the cabinet and smell his face cream and toothpaste and cologne. When I emerge he’s half naked on the bed.
“You can come smell me instead,” he smirks and sips a beer. I walk to the bed and straddle his waist, easing down on top of him and pushing him backward as I take the beer from his hand. I drain the liquid out of thirst and get rid of the bottle. I slowly move on top of him, running my hands over his bare torso and reveling in the feeling of having to be nowhere else for a very long time.
I let my eyes drift closed, “God, it’s good to be here.”
“Good to have you,” he sits up, tosses me down and takes control.
He undresses me slowly enough to make me hornier than I already am. He kisses me all over like he’s missed every inch of skin. When we fuck this time it’s slow and deep and I can feel it awaken places inside of me that have been asleep for a long time.
***
For the first few weeks we just fuck and eat and talk only when absolutely necessary. The days all begin to blend, in a comfortable way. We both glow from the ease of the transition. Brian doesn’t even bark when Debbie points out our constant state of honeymoon-like bliss. My life has never been this simple…this relaxing. I pick up shifts at the diner when I feel like being social. I cook for Brian when he doesn’t work too late. I get up to blow him in the shower in the morning because it puts him in a good mood.
Then one night I’m pulled from a deep sleep by a nightmare. I am back in LA at some big, glowing party and eating shiny blue fruit that falls from trees coming up through the floor of the biggest house I’ve ever been in. The fruits are shaped like silos and taste like a strawberry and a papaya and a kiwi all mixed, but better. They have a hard Robin’s egg blue skin you bite through to a soft, gooey center. In the dream I am told that I can only eat the fruit that has fallen from the trees. I somehow inherently know that if I pick the fruit from the trees before it falls that Brian will die, but each time I pass a new tree I pluck one down and take a bite. I gag as I swallow, but I can’t stop myself.
I have the dream four nights in a row, on the fifth night I don’t let myself go to sleep.
***
We get really high on a Saturday night, waiting for it to get late enough to make an entrance at Babylon. We lie on the floor in a v-shape, head-to-head, and pass the strongest joint I can remember smoking back and forth. When we’re past the point of making sense, and certainly not going anywhere anytime tonight, Brian starts to talk (the best side affect of a high Brian is loose lips).
“Having you here is good,” he laughs at nothing.
“Being here is good,” I laugh with him.
“No, I mean, it’s really good. Better than I thought.” He laughs more.
“I know what you mean, I really do.” I laugh trying to decide who is more high.
“Do you?” He sits up and looks at me with this pensive, serious face he gets when he smokes.
“I do.” I sit up and nod emphatically, because I really do know he means.
”I don’t know if you do,” he shakes his head, looks frustrated.
I move closer to him, “No, I do. I honestly do.”
He stares at me for a long time and then leans forward, tracing his long fingers down the side of my face and over my lips and through the hair on the back of my head. He leans forward and kisses me softly; it’s an inexplicably depressing gesture.
I haven’t had the dream in over a week, but the moment I close my eyes the blue fruit trees appear.
***
The dream won’t stop now and I’m losing so much sleep that I’m starting to hallucinate. Someone orders the blue plate special at the diner and I recoil, his head turns into the fruit from my dream. I go to the bathroom, douse my head with cold water and stare at myself in the mirror. What the fuck is going on?
I consider talking to Brian about the dream. I decide that he probably doesn’t want to hear that I make the decision to kill him in my dreams each night. Besides, listening to other people’s dreams is about as fucking interesting and reading other people’s travelogues.
After a few more restless nights I finally get so tired that I collapse one afternoon while I’m working on some sketches. I fall into a deep, heavy sleep that pushes me into the dream past the point where I generally wake up choking.
The party ends and I have to go home, I secretly pluck some fruits off each tree as I pass them and fill my pockets until my pants are bulging and heavy.
I drive through a strange town in a car that doesn’t belong to me. I pull up to a house I don’t recognize and pull keys out of my pocket. I walk slowly through a dark house that is split level and reminds me of something out of the pages of Architectural Digest. When I get to the room I know is the bedroom I open the door slowly and am suddenly in the loft. Brian sleeps soundly in his bed. I stand at the top of the stairs and wonder aloud if I’m awake.
Brian sits up slowly and watches me. It’s as if he were never sleeping at all.
“Did you bring them?” he asks. I nod.
I empty my pockets on the bed and he begins to slowly eat each of the blue fruits. I watch him intently and though an unbelievable sadness washes over me, I don’t stop him. When he’s done he throws out the cores in the trashcan beside the bed. He kisses me soundly and his lips are bittersweet.
“Go to sleep, I’ll be fine,” he tucks me in and touches me softly. I’m convinced he’ll be gone in the morning, but I drift off easily.
I wake up screaming, Brian’s arms around me, his voice is calm and hot next to my ear. He whispers ‘it’s a dream’ and ‘you’re okay’ and ‘I’m here’ until I shake it off and settle down.
When I’m finally quiet he asks, “When are you going back?”
I sit up straight, “Back where?”
“To LA.” He sounds so matter of fact. He lights a cigarette.
“Why would I go back? What are you talking about?” I look around on top of the comforter for any remnants of the blue fruit. I lean across Brian and check the garbage for the cores.
“The dreams, you’ve had them for weeks. You’re restless and…and unhappy and you mutter about LA and parties in your fucking dreams. There must be something there…someone...”
I watch his face and my eyes grow wide as he speaks.
The things we let ourselves believe when we can’t admit to our own happiness are unreal.
I laugh and his face twists at my reaction. I move close to him, “Brian…God, we’re both so fucking ridiculous. We can’t admit we’re happy. You’re convinced I’m leaving you and I’m dreaming about killing you. It’s like we need the fucking drama to survive.”
He looks at me a long time; he’s probably wondering where I got such good drugs.
“You kill me in your dreams?” He finally inquires.
I shake my head and laugh, “Sort of. Yes, I guess. But, I think I’ve figured it out. This blue fruit I keep eating…it’s like the apple in the Garden of Eden. My forbidden fruit is happiness, I’m convinced if I let the happiness in it will be the end of us.”
Brian shakes his head, “You’re fucking bizarre. You know that? I let you do too many drugs when you were a child.”
I shake my head, “Probably, but I’m right. And why the fuck would I go back to LA?”
His eyes shift down, “Aren’t you bored here?”
“Bored?” I shift closer to him, make him look at me, “Do you think you could possibly bore me?”
He shrugs and sucks on his cigarette, “This is no LA. I’m no Conner James.”
I settle next to him and watch as he puffs smoke rings, I never figured out how to do that. “Thank God.”
I can tell he’s watching me now, I take his cigarette away and put it out. I look up at him and add, “LA was an experience, one I wouldn’t trade, but it doesn’t fit me…not at all. Conner James is…he’s nothing. None of them were anything. I don’t love…well I only love you.”
“You are on drugs,” he laughs, but he kisses my forehead and I can feel his body start to relax.
“I’m not going anywhere,” I add.
“Neither am I,” he kisses me.
I smile up at him, “Good, so let’s just try this happy thing. Okay?”
He shakes his head, “I don’t do happy.” Then he sighs and adds, “You know what they say, all good things must…”
I cut him off, “All good things must come. Period. That’s what I say.”
He looks at me quizzically and then smiles as he pushes me onto my back, “If you say so.”
He sucks me slowly, runs his hands all over me. When I come I nearly cry with relief. I know I’ll sleep tonight, for the first time in weeks, without dreaming.
End
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