Homecoming

*9*

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Reunion Blues

Brian

Ted – it would be fucking Theodore – asks, "Have you seen Michael yet?" and that pretty much puts paid to the nice little vibe that was going.

Justin shakes his head and sneaks a look at me, but I become suddenly absorbed in checking out the totally not hot waiter as he brings a refill for our coffee.

Emmett is giving Ted 'shut up, Teddy!' looks, but Ted, although he's got one eye on me like he's getting ready to dodge quickly if he has to, goes on, "He's been trying to reach you."

I can imagine. I just shrug. So there's going to be fucking drama with Mikey when he finds out Justin's back, what else is new.

Ted bites his lip and looks at Emmett as if for help.

Em sighs, and then says to Justin, rather than to me, "The thing is, sweetie, it might be a good idea if you didn't talk too much about the new house in front of Michael right now."

"Or Deb," Ted adds.

That gets my attention all right

"What the fuck's happened now?" I demand.

Ted takes a deep breath, and drops his voice so low we have to lean forward to hear it. As I do, somehow Justin's hand winds up over the top of mine, and then I find myself leaning towards him, rather than Ted, and I feel the ghost of a touch as his hair brushes against mine across the table. It surprises me how good it feels.

"They've reached an out of court settlement," Ted says, breaking through that moment of comfort.

"Fuck it, Ted! I fucking told you …!"

Ted shrugs. "He just won't take the money, Brian," he says apologetically. "And I might be a wiz with figures, but he knows damned well he doesn't have that sort of cash lying hidden anywhere for me to miraculously find."

Justin looks confused, because Emmett says, "Michael's going to have to sell the house, honey. To pay the hospital costs and everything for that guy."

I see Sunshine shake his head. Even after all he's been through, he still expects the world to make sense.

I find myself standing up abruptly. "Fuck!" I say.

Emmett looks up at me. "Brian, honey, we know … we all know you would have given him any money he needed, but … he's got a right to look after his man himself, you know?"

I stare down at him for a moment, then, just as Justin starts to get up I sink back into my seat, feeling suddenly exhausted.

Mikey loves that fucking house.

There's silence for a moment, then Ted says, "He was really upset."

He bites his lip and looks at Emmett for a moment like he's hoping that he won't have to say whatever the fuck is coming next, then blurts out, "They showed him the list of witnesses the complainant was going to call on in court."

He pauses for a moment but I'm already way ahead of him before he says even more softly than before, "Brian, you were on it."

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Justin

What the fuck?

For a moment all I feel is confusion and then I look at Brian.

His eyes are blank.

Oh, fuck!

Emmett is saying something about how everyone knows that Brian wouldn't really have testified for the guy, and Ted is saying how he would have to if he was summoned to court, and all the while Brian is sitting there and I know he's in agony.

I thought this whole thing was past – or, at least, that the issue of Brian's testimony was. When Ben accepted a plea bargain I thought it was all over. It never occurred to me that Brian could be called in the civil suit.

What a fucking mess!

Neither Deb nor Michael are ever going to let him forget this. As if he had any sort of choice. They both think Brian should have just lied, even though everyone from Carl to their lawyer said that was the worst thing he could do because of all the other witnesses.

But Brian's testimony, would have had impact, because he was the one who pulled Ben away; the friend of Michael's who didn't join in the assault, but hauled Ben off instead.

Deb's still angry with him for not somehow rescuing Ben and racing him off somewhere, like that would have solved anything.

The thing is, it all might have gone quite differently. Originally, they were going to let Ben plead to some minor thing on the grounds that he was an upstanding citizen who'd been unbearably provoked. Then he would have got off with community service or something. Just like Hobbs.

That's what Brian said at the time, and it's stuck in my mind ever since. Because it made me realize that Brian didn't think Ben should have got off with a slap on the wrist, any more than Hobbs did.

But it didn't matter anyway, because while the police were collecting statements that everyone thought would prove what a model of patience and non-violence Ben was, they uncovered a whole lot of stuff that made them change their minds.

It seems Brian wasn't the only one that Ben had had run ins with back in his Steroid Mary days. The police found two guys at the gym that Ben had got into shoving matches with or thrown punches at, and someone else who'd seen him shove Brian into that locker, (something I didn't even know about until all this started to come out and Brian had to tell me), and even a student that Ben had thrown up against a wall when he'd argued with Ben about a grade.

So then instead of being Mr Squeaky Clean, all of a sudden Ben was a guy with a drug problem and a tendency to violence.

In the end, he'd accepted a plea which meant six months jail time. He's been in for over four months now, and there's a good chance he could be out any day now, with good behavior and stuff.

But it looks like he won't have a house to come home to.

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Brian

Fuck!

I thought this whole fucking issue was dead. Especially when Ted said they'd agreed to settle.

I've been telling Michael for weeks that I can find the money.

Fortunately, it became obvious that it was pretty much going to come down to just the hospital costs and some limited slap-on-the-wrist damages, because we dug up a whole lot of stuff about the complainant. The fucker's not even a practicing Christian; what he is is a professional provocateur. You can actually fucking hire him and others like him to stir up trouble.

Once we found that out, Deb threatened him with a counter suit for the emotional damage he'd caused her with his comment, and the fucking lawyers said that she might even have some sort of chance of winning it. How fucked is that?

They could have both sued each other for millions and the only winners would have been the lawyers.

Once they knew we'd found out who the guy was, the "legitimate" protesters who were mainly from some fucking right wing evangelical church group, suddenly disappeared. They didn't want it to come out that they'd hired these troublemakers, so they backed off and were no longer ready to fund his legal fees or have anything more to do with it.

Once he knew that, the guy was a lot more willing to take what was on offer.

All up, around $200,000.

And I could have found that easily. Hell, it's only what we made on the fucking mansion. Mikey doesn't have to sell his damned house.

Mind you, that's better than his fucking brilliant original idea which was to sell the comic store.

Ben's going to be unemployed, they still owe money on the house, and if they can't pay, they'll lose it anyway, and Mikey's planning to sell their sole source of income.

Fuckwit!

The thing is that, even without this latest wrinkle, he and Deb still somehow blame me for Ben being in prison.

Never mind that Ben beat the living shit out of some old guy just because Ben didn't like what he said; or that he did it in front of a crowd of witnesses including Deb's police officer boyfriend. No, it's all my fault because I didn't get him off the old guy sooner, or didn't lie my ass off over what happened (like no one else had seen it), or didn't rescue him and take him away somewhere safe. Just where, or what that was going to solve, who the fuck knows?

I don't. They don't. They just want someone to blame, and, of course, it can't be Zen Ben, because he's the fucking good guy. So let's find a way to blame Brian, because he's the asshole, and if he was there, then it must have been his fault somehow. Of course, if I hadn't been there, that would have made it my fault as well.

Mikey even said to me at one point that I'd helped Ted when he got arrested, so why couldn't I help Ben?

I seriously think that sometimes he does think I'm some sort of fucking super hero. And when it turns out that I'm not … then I'm the devil incarnate.

He even blamed me for letting Ben shove me into the lockers that time in the gym. He said it looked really bad because I was supposed to be a friend of Ben's.

It's not like I told the fucking cops about it. Some other gym bunny saw us, and when the police started asking questions, he couldn't wait to have his moment of drama and tell the cops all about it.

Fuck!

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Justin

I'm trying to work out what I can say or do to make things at least a little better, when Emmett takes his life in his hands, and leans over the table and pats Brian on the hand.

"Honey, don't you let them get to you," he advises. "We all know how much you've tried to help. Now you take our little Sunshine, and you hightail it out of here. You two shouldn't even be thinking about anything but the fact that he's back, and you're back together. You should be celebrating, not worrying about Michael's little dramas."

For a moment, I think Brian might really lash out. He's looking down at the table top, but his lips are tight and he looks beyond angry. But then he raises his head and meets Emmett's eyes, and he sort of gives this little huff, and suddenly, surprisingly, he's okay and the tension drains out of all of us.

Then Ted says quietly, "Emmett's right, Brian. You two should get out of here. We'll talk to Deb, and see if we can get her to talk some sense into Michael."

Brian sighs, but then he nods.

"Good luck," he says dryly, as he climbs to his feet.

I scramble out of my seat, and Emmett gets up as well. He gives me another hug, and then moves past me to put his arms around Brian. Brian doesn't exactly respond, but he lets Emmett's arms stay round him for a moment or two, and sort of leans into him a little, before he pulls away.

Meanwhile, Ted has got up, and while we hug he whispers, "I am so glad you're back. He really needs you here right now."

I nod, and tighten my arms for a moment to let him know how grateful I am that he's been there for Brian, then I step away. Brian gives him a look, and growls, "You even think about embracing me, Theodore, and you're fired."

Ted just smiles, and Brian puts a hand on his shoulder and squeezes, which, by the look on Ted's face, he recognizes as the real honor it is.

And then we leave.

I'm really quiet as we walk out to the car. There isn't much that I can say.

I had so hoped all this about Ben's thing was over. It was bad enough when they decided to charge him. I nearly came home then. The only thing that stopped me is that there wasn't anything I could have done; except maybe make things worse by trying to defend Brian, or by getting him all defensive over me wanting to and not being able to because of all the unwritten Kinney rules about getting into it with Michael and Deb. But the main thing was that my being in New York gave Brian an excuse that even Debbie couldn't argue with for getting away from all their bullshit. He was coming up every weekend during that time, and it meant that for a couple of days anyway, he could get right away from it all and we could just be together and forget them.

Plus, he would have totally freaked out if I'd come back because of that.

He would have been looking for some damned Kinney cliff to throw me off to stop me.

But I'm here now, and I'm way past the point where I'm prepared to hold my tongue where they're concerned – either Mikey or Deb. So they need to fucking watch how they treat Brian, because I am so not letting them put the blame for this onto him.

Ben brought this on himself. I don't say I didn't sympathize with him, with how he reacted to what that guy said. But he'd be the first one to say that violence never solves anything. And Deb was the one who told me that, when I was getting hassled so badly at St James.

So they all need to get over trying to find ways to blame Brian, and let Ben take responsibility for what he did.

Still, it sucks that they could lose the house. I know that Brian would give them the money – or at least loan it to them. Why the fuck can't they just let him? It's like they want to be able to lay that on him as well.

'Oh, we could have saved the house, but we just couldn't take the money from Brian, knowing he thought that Ben only got what he deserved.'

I can just hear them. It's like they'd rather find another way to claim Brian has messed up Mikey's life than actually let him fix things.

Stupid fucking assholes!

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Brian

I can hear him thinking as we get into the car. And the more he thinks, the madder he's getting.

Suddenly, it's almost funny.

My ex-best friend is behaving like a total prick, and my surrogate Mom is going to blame me when poor little Mikey winds up on the streets – like I'm going to fucking let that happen. But that won't stop her berating me for days and doing her best to make my life a total misery.

But somehow none of that is all that important right now.

It'll get sorted out somehow. Ted can usually get Debbie to see sense, and then she can beat it into Mikey. They'll take the money and keep the fucking house. The professor will come home, and take up writing full time, or open a fucking halfway house for little hustlers, or some other worthy enterprise, and Mikey can support him with the damned comic store and they can all live happily ever after.

But right now, I barely give a shit.

Because my own happily ever after is sitting in the car with me, plotting revenge for all the hurts he thinks I've suffered over all that shit, and just that thought wipes away all the other dramas and reduces them to fucking pinpricks that hardly register in the scheme of things.

Before I start the car, I reach out and grab his neck. He looks at me, and I let myself smile at him.

For a moment, his eyes stay angry, then, when I go on smiling at him, that changes. He starts to smile back, and ducks his head a little, and if I didn't know better I'd say he was fucking blushing.

Guess he heard all the things I was thinking and didn't want to have to say out loud.

"We need to call your Mommy," I tell him, letting go of his neck. "And then we need to get the hell out to the house and start packing."

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