2020-04-18 21:02![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
threedimensions
threedimensionsDimensions: [1-2]
Timeline: January 2017
Title: Futile
Summary: Mark attempts to talk Katelan out of posting the pictures; Brandon joins, and it goes less than ideally.
~4.7k
♫ "Choke" — I DON'T KNOW HOW BUT THEY FOUND ME ♫
Mark had wanted to find a way to smoke up before calling her, to chill his nerves and to stay calm, but Brandon didn't; he wanted to be sharp and on point. He wanted to be angry, Mark thought, which wasn't going to help the situation, but with how completely lost he felt, Brandon's anger would at least be something. He poured himself a drink while Brandon sat in the chair next to the window and glared at her letter again, formulating the script for the call, probably. Mark's stomach did another flip when he thought of her face, of their last conversation when they'd broken up, and he downed it quickly. Out of the corner of this eye, he saw Brandon look at him when he poured another, but he deliberately didn't look back; instead, he held up the other glass, offering.
"Nah," Brandon said immediately. "Maybe after we hang up." He paused. "Probably. You know she's going to piss me off."
"You're already pissed off."
"No shit, aren't you?"
Mark sighed and sipped his new drink. "Yeah," he said. "But it's not going to help. If I get combative with her, she's just going to dig in and there's going to be no hope of actually talking to her, because she'll just focus on winning the fight." Just like someone else they all knew well. "I think it'll be better if I just talk to her," he said again, although Brandon had insisted on being present for this conversation. Mark was sure he had a reason, and it probably was a good one, knowing him, but he was already on edge, chomping at the bit to get in and start swinging.
Brandon made a face, knowing what Mark meant and why he was being asked to, essentially, keep his mouth shut at first. "Fine," he said. "Let's just see how it goes." He held the letter out and, although it was almost the last thing he wanted to do, Mark set the whiskey bottle next to him on the end of the bed, took the letter, picked up his phone, and entered in the number she'd written.
He put the phone on speaker, even though the room was quiet and Brandon had good hearing, because Brandon would get annoyed if he didn't. One ring, two...three...
"Hello," her voice almost sang, bright and cheery.
Mark had no idea how to even start. "Hi, Katelan," he said slowly. "It's Mark."
"Oh, hi, Mark!" she said happily. "So good to hear from you! How are you?"
"Not good," he said.
"Aw," she said. "I'll bet. I'm assuming you got my gift?"
Mark held up a hand as Brandon clenched his jaw and his fists. "It wasn't a gift, Katelan. It was a really shitty thing to do. You never once asked if it was okay to take pictures."
"You would have said no."
"No shit."
"It's better to ask forgiveness than permission," she said sweetly.
"I don't forgive you," he said flatly.
"I'm not asking for either." Her voice turned sharp, businesslike. "I assume you've read my letter. Do I get to assume why you're calling?"
"Why not, you assumed all sorts of other shit."
"Sure," she said comfortably. "I can't spend my whole life waiting around for other people to pick and choose what they deem acceptable. I assume that you don't want me to post the pictures."
"No."
"Great." Her voice brightened again. "Then I assume my check will be in the mail."
"No."
"You have two options, Mark. You have to choose one."
Brandon made a fist and lightly rubbed at his chest, and Mark knew that he didn't have heartburn—having spent a lot of time around Brandon with his little siblings when they were all so much younger, Mark recognized it as one of the ASL signs the kids were all taught early on: I'm sorry.
"Look, I'm sorry for how things ended between us," he told the phone. "I know how upset you were." He paused, not liking the next part, but Brandon had assured him that this wasn't about the truth right now, it was about what she wanted to hear because she held the power. "I treated you badly, and that was wrong. You didn't deserve that."
"That's right," she said, her voice a little softer. "So nice of you to finally realize that."
"I never felt good about the way we ended," he said, and that was true enough. "You felt bad, and I caused that. I'm sorry."
"Good," she said. "Is Brandon sorry, too?"
Mark held up his hand to quiet him again as he spread his hands, indignant. "Should he be? He didn't do anything."
"He did plenty," she said, her voice now hard.
"Like what?" Mark was honestly puzzled by this. "He only ever did what we asked him to."
"That you asked him to."
That you asked me to ask him to, Mark thought, but he didn't want to get into a 'No, you!', 'No, you!' argument with her. "Okay, and?"
"And! Stealing my boyfriend away doesn't count?"
I did not! Brandon mouthed. He wasn't going to keep quiet for much longer. "Come on, he didn't do anything like that," Mark said.
"Fucking my boyfriend when I wasn't around?" Katelan said acidly. "That doesn't count?"
Shit. Mark had forgotten that Brandon didn't know that she'd known about that. His eyebrows went up and he looked at Mark. "That was my fault," Mark said, again to the phone. "I started it." Not every time they'd messed around without her being present, but...mostly.
"And are you sorry for that, too?"
Before he could help it, Mark's mind flashed back to one night after they'd stayed up way too late smoking and writing songs while Brandon was house-sitting in this big empty duplex that had a great open room with amazing acoustics. Brandon had offered to him to stay over; Brandon had offered for him to sleep in the bed. Mark had lain next to him and could only think about sex, and not just sex, but sex with him. He had suggested it without a second thought and Brandon had agreed almost before he was done asking. "Yeah," he said, but when Brandon frowned a little at him, he didn't know if it was because he'd hesitated a little too long, or if he thought he shouldn't be. What she wanted to hear, not truth, Mark thought, and threw back some more of his drink.
"I don't think you are," Katelan said.
"Well...I am."
"Then not sorry enough," she said crisply. "I think it's a good thing that I managed to get so many shots of you two. It was for my amusement then, and has kept me pretty well entertained for these last few years, but they've turned out to be pretty good insurance too, huh? So. Behind door number one, you pay me what I'm owed, and we all move on. Behind door number two, I post them all, for everyone's amusement. And let me tell you, some of the ones I held back? Very amusing. Oh, look at this one. It's almost adorable how hard you tried to learn how to suck a dick, how much effort you really put into making him cum."
What the fuck, Brandon mouthed, staring hard at the phone, and Mark only shook his head. She was looking at them now? "Um," he said. "That was what you wanted, don't forget. All of it was your idea. I agreed for you."
"Didn't take much convincing," she almost sang. "You wanted it. You loved it. As is evidenced in this one: oh, the look on your face as he stuck it in you. You even have your arms around his neck, that's so sweet. This one here's a great cum shot—he fucked you so good that you could hardly stand it. I remember this one: you kept moaning his name over and over as he slammed you and you started to cum, 'Oh, Brandon, oh—'"
"Stop it!" Brandon snapped. Mark wearily drained the rest of his whiskey.
"Oh. He is there with you. Hi, Brandon," she said, her voice a little louder.
Mark looked at him, and Brandon set his jaw. "Katelan," he said.
"Of course he's there," she said, and laughed. "Still inseparable, you two. Oh, Mark. You were so in love with him that I'm honestly surprised you're not together now."
"Huh?" Mark looked up from his empty glass and blinked. Brandon gave him an I don't know what the fuck is going on shrug.
"You were in love with him," she repeated. "Totally head over heels. Or ankles in the air, whichever you prefer."
"Jesus," Brandon said. "Not everybody that fucks is fucking in love. Some fucking women." He rolled his eyes.
"Maybe not, but he was in love with you."
"No, I wasn't," Mark said. This was a real conversation they were having. He was getting so tired.
"Yes, honey, you were. Probably still are. I could even see it then, although it took me way too long to figure out what it was."
"I'm not," he said, again trying not to let complete bafflement at this being their current argument sidetrack them. "Don't you think I'd know if I was?" It was about the most ridiculous thing he'd ever heard. He could feel out for just about anyone he'd ever met, and it was fucking stupid to think he'd miss something like that. He loved Brandon, sure—he loved all his friends, especially his best friend in the world, closer than anyone else. Literally. Well. He'd been right, though—fucking around for fucking's sake was all it had been, and it was well into the past. Neither of them had even thought of it in probably five years. Mark knew he hadn't.
"No, not right away," Katelan said. "It's so ingrained that I wouldn't be surprised if you still didn't get it or realize what it was."
"That's just stupid," Brandon complained. "You haven't even seen any of us in five years, how the fuck would you know what we think about anything?"
"I saw it then." She paused. "We talked after you ended it. I saw everything." She paused again. "So, I ended it."
"Yeah, this is clearly all done and closed up," Mark muttered.
Brandon ignored him and went back at Katelan. "One second you're saying it's a weird love thing and next it's so subtle no one can even figure it out. Make up your fucking mind, or quit making shit up."
"I'm making up nothing—merely reporting what I saw."
"Your hot mess fucking delusions are cutting exactly zero ice with the rest of your goddamn bullshit right now," Brandon snapped.
Mark wanted them to stop arguing, but he also wanted another drink; he glanced at the bottle, thinking for a second to actually make one of those options happen, but he'd have to either put the phone down or give it to Brandon, at which point he was pretty sure he wouldn't get it back until the smoking remains of their band scented their futures.
"He didn't know that he wanted you to fuck him until I came along, but he sure did, didn't he?"
"Whatever," Mark said, wanting to forestall at least one of their sidetracks. "You can think what you want. I apologized for how we ended, I apologize for everything else that happened between us. I'm sorry, okay? I guess—maybe it was your idea, but maybe I took it too far? And that's my fault."
"The first step is admitting your problem," she said, satisfied.
He rolled his eyes. "Okay, so...I admit it, then. I was wrong. It was my fault we broke up and my fault you felt bad about it." He paused. "Can you just...take that as it is?"
"And...not post the pictures?" she asked shrewdly.
"Yeah."
"No."
"Katelan—"
"Look, there's just no way we can get you millions of fucking dollars," Brandon cut in, as Mark knew that he would. "It's just not possible, not even if we wanted to. We haven't even made that much yet, and we might not ever. You're just being insane. It by itself was really shitty thing to do, and it's even worse to try blackmailing us about it for so much that we literally can't do."
There was a long pause. "Even if you wanted to," Katelan repeated, her voice soft, and Mark frowned, thinking that something was wrong with her tone.
"Well," Brandon said. He looked at Mark, and Mark just looked back at him, not knowing what the fuck to say in any case. "How do we know you won't just post them anyway? Even if we did get you that ridiculous amount?"
"I'm not the untrustworthy one," she said, her voice still measured.
"Really?" Brandon demanded. "What do you call taking sneaky fucking pictures of people when they don't know about it and threatening them with revenge porn to liven up your shitty, boring life?"
"If either of you would have been able to tear your eyes away from each other for two seconds, you would have seen me doing it," she said. "It just goes to prove my point."
"All it proves is that you're pissed off at Mark for somehow treating you badly, which he didn't even really do, and blaming him for everything and playing the victim, when you're not so innocent yourself."
"Chill," Mark said quietly, holding up his hand again. Brandon was highly agitated now, glaring and clenching his fists again. He was going to call her a cunt or something in the next few minutes, and then everything would go to hell.
"Yes, you'd better listen to him," Katelan said. "Don't forget, Brandon, that I hold all the cards in this hand. You have nothing." She paused. "Except my money. Now, I'm willing to talk, of course—I'm not unreasonable. That's why I sent you guys my phone number. Have you talked about it?" Her voice brightened. "How much am I really getting?"
They hadn't, beyond the impossibility of her original demand, but Mark had checked his bank account before Brandon had come to his room to discuss calling her. He knew damn well that he didn't want her to get a penny, but they really might have to make a choice here.
"How about the good feeling of not blackmailing people that have been out of your life for five years?" Brandon suggested. "Especially someone that's apologized to you several times already?"
"You haven't."
Brandon opened his mouth and Mark held up his hand again, knowing damn well that the next words out of his mouth were going to be something along the lines of I'm sorry that you're such a bitch. "Katelan, come on," he said. "It—that's really going to fuck up everything for us. And not just us, we're not the only guys in the band. The others don't deserve it. This is our lives. Why does something that happened so long ago have to be a thing now? I'm sorry. Can't you let it go?" He paused, knowing that Brandon was going to hate him saying it, but he was very afraid now that it was a lost cause already. "Please?"
"No," she said softly. "I didn't deserve what you did. I didn't deserve feeling stupid when I realized how much you two were fucking each other together behind my back. I didn't deserve being pushed off to the side when he was all you cared about; when the only reason you'd come to see me was so that you could call him over. I didn't deserve watching you wait for him to come over to fuck you without a single thought to being with me—for you to practically forget about even wanting to have sex with me at all in those last few weeks. All you wanted was him. Fine. I deserve something back. My insurance requires it."
"Katelan...I can't—we can't—"
"Can't and won't are different. You don't even want to try, do you? Does part of you maybe want me to post them?"
"No!" Mark and Brandon shouted at the same time.
Katelan made a little 'hmm' noise. "Last chance to make me a reasonable offer, then. Even if you wanted to."
"We'll sue you," Brandon said. "Do you not get that? It's fucking illegal."
"You fucked my boyfriend; I can fuck the law."
"You really don't care if you lose every last penny and any chance of owning a house or car for the rest of your life."
"I doubt you can do that much damage. I'm just a sad little regular person, not a millionaire rock star."
"For the last time—"
"No, Brandon, I do not care if you threaten to sue me. Or if you do. This will fuck you up far more than that will fuck me up. You decide if we all sink or swim."
"What do you want?" Mark asked, at the same time Brandon muttered, "I don't trust her."
Pause. "What did you say, Brandon?" she asked sharply.
Mark looked at him and shook his head to forestall him answering. "He didn't say anything. I asked what you wanted. Reasonably, I guess. I have some I can send you, I have—"
"No, he said something. If it's good enough to make little comments under your breath, it's good enough to say out loud. Brandon?"
"I said that I don't trust you," he said grimly. "I don't see how you can expect me to," he went on, speaking fast now. "Anyone that takes sneaky little pictures and then uses them for blackmail is a manipulative, conniving, two-faced fucking cunt that will never have anything that you don't take from someone else."
"Stop," Mark said loudly.
There was a long pause then and Mark closed his eyes. "Okay," Katelan said, and Mark's eyes flew open again at the iciness there. "You two had your chance." She paused. "You may have fucked each other, but I'm going to fuck you both."
Mark opened his mouth, but the words in it died as his phone screen started flashing the 'end call' time. He looked up at Brandon, his eyes wide, and saw the fury in his. "Fucking bitch!" Brandon spat. "Shit! Call her back," he demanded. When Mark didn't move, he snatched the phone out of his hand and tried to do it himself. The call was rejected, no option to leave a voicemail. He swore again and tried again with the same result. At the third try, the call didn't connect: Mark's number had been blocked. He pulled out his own phone and grabbed for the letter with her number written on it, starting to tap it out and having to retry when his hands, shaking with rage and horror, hit the wrong number twice. Mark wanted to tell him to try a text first, but a few seconds later they both stared down at his phone as well, the 'unable to connect' message glaring back up at them after only two rings; she had blocked this new caller as well, of course knowing who it would be.
Brandon nearly slammed the phone down on the side table, then leaned forward with his elbows on his knees and his hands in his hair. "Fuck. Fuck."
Mark just poured himself another drink, which he polished off immediately. He got up to get some ice and poured another, reached for the other glass and upended it, poured a vodka rocks, and handed that one back without looking; he felt Brandon take it and heard the ice clink as he upended it. "How long do we have," he asked dully.
"I don't know," Brandon said, almost biting the words out. "She could be posting them right now. She probably is. Fucking whore."
Mark leaned against the little hotel desk where the ice bucket and booze had been set and gulped at his new (fourth? Fifth? He'd had at least one before Brandon showed up and couldn't keep track any more) drink. "I guess it's good that we're not all really famous yet. We're not opening still, but co-headlining isn't headlining. There's that."
"Is that supposed to make me feel better?" Brandon snapped at him.
Mark thought that he might have been irritated at that—this all was not his fault, although if it was anyone's other than Katelan's, he supposed that, yeah, it was—but his drinks were catching up with him and while he was getting a pretty good buzz on, he wasn't happy about it. He just felt dulled, like a steam roller had had its way with him. "Apparently not," he said.
"We finally got signed to an actual, real label. If we don't pull through, everything they've invested in us will be trash and we'll get dropped." Brandon stared moodily down at his glass when Mark didn't have anything to say to that, then he drained it and held it out. "Sorry," he said when Mark took it and began refilling it. "I shouldn't be pissed off at you. I'm just...really...pissed off. Not only that it's apparently happening, but that there isn't a goddamn thing we can do about it now. She was never going to listen to reason. Some of the shit she said? She's fucking delusional. That was a wasted call."
Mark nodded, adding a couple more ice cubes to his glass and holding up the Smirnoff bottle until it was full. "I thought it might have been. But I guess we had to try."
"Fuck," Brandon muttered as he took his new drink. "Fuck her. Fucking manipulative pig." He glanced up. "If you don't care, I'm just going to stay here and swear for the next hour or so. There's nothing else I can do, and I'm not going back to my room—Jack's there, and he doesn't deserve for me to come in ranting and raving and scaring the shit out of him. None of this is his fault."
Sure, it's mine, Mark thought, but he just nodded. He shouldn't have allowed Brandon to be there while he called her. He should have offered her the figure in his mind sooner, he should have made sure she was okay when she broke up with him and he left—because she was hurt, he'd known it then and he sure as hell knew it now. He didn't know if even a little bit more effort on his part, all those years ago, would have helped her not to grow such resentment for so long. Maybe—probably—he should have left her suggestion by the side of the road that day, not thought about it any farther than the first time she brought it up. If he'd never thought about it, never mentioned it to Brandon, never talked about it seriously, never invited him over that first time...
"We have to think about how we're going to handle this," Brandon said after a few minutes of silent drinking. "It's going to come up and we're going to get asked about it. You're going to get asked about it—about a lot of shit, like, 'Are you gay?'" He glanced at Mark. "You have to know that no matter how many times you say no, they're going to keep asking anyway. People are fucking idiots and will never take in new information when they're already set on how they think the world works."
"I know," Mark told his glass.
"A lot of people are going to think the same shit she does and not let it go. Hopefully not everyone, but not everyone gets the 'for the literal fuck of it' aspect."
"Yeah."
"Should we get everyone together and let them know it's coming? Not just Andrew and Keith, but Karney with PR, Peter and Josh and Ashley, everyone that's involved with the band?"
Mark winced at the idea of having to make an announcement like that. "Can we just, I don't know, see if she changes her mind?"
Brandon gave him a get real look. "Can you be serious?"
"I am. Maybe I don't want to get everyone together and talk about this shit that's in the past, and start waiting around for the rest of the shit to hit the fan, only for them never to come up because she was playing with us."
"Do you really get that feeling?"
"No," Mark said softly, tilting his glass this way and that, so that the ice slid around. The original cubes were barely slivers now; he'd finished off each drink too quickly for them to properly melt. "But I wouldn't put it past her. She could be unpredictable. She liked to figure out exactly what you expected of her and then do the opposite. She could just be making us sweat. Or, yeah, she's planning to post them. But maybe not for a few months or even longer." He shrugged and looked up to see the doubtful look on Brandon's face that he knew would be there. "This isn't our first tour. This isn't our first album. We just did our third Warped run last summer and we were advertised as one of the headliners for months and she didn't say or do anything until now. Fuck, when I first saw that there were pictures, for half a second I even wondered if she was suing me for paternity for some kid I never knew about. How do we know that she won't just enjoy us knowing that they exist, and that she could release them at any moment, for years? Like the five years she's had them."
"I guess we don't," Brandon said, but he pretty clearly didn't believe that would be the case. Mark didn't either, honestly, but the idea of having to deal with the repercussions of any of this before they absolutely had to was making his head hurt again.
They drank in silence for a while longer. Brandon got up and made his next drink (less ice and more vodka) and he held his hand out for Mark's glass, which wasn't empty at that exact moment, but was a couple of seconds later. "How much is this going to fuck with everything?" Mark asked then.
Brandon shrugged and gave him his new drink. "Depends on how much people care. If it gets so that we're not making guarantees on tour shit like ticket sales and merch and then album sales or streams, we really could get dropped. It's touch and go when you're new. Everyone already knows I'm gay so it's not like they're going to stop coming to shows just for that." He sat down and sipped his new drink again. "Like, personally, it'll affect us as much as we let it, probably. I think...if we try to shut it down, just play it off and then don't talk about it, just wait for the fans and everyone else to get a hold of whichever new story there will be...maybe it won't be that bad. Maybe we can just move on and everyone will forget about it. It's not like it happened last week, it was five fucking years ago. It's literally old news and has less than zero bearing on the present. Maybe it'll just be like, yeah, it happened, but it's not a thing, so, so what?" He snorted. "That would show that two-faced bitch. She's a fucking snake."
That made Mark think of something Brandon had said earlier, something he'd reminded himself to ask about after he'd initially brought the envelope over. "Um...did you talk to Jack about it? Like—I guess I don't know if you told him a while ago that it happened, but actually seeing the evidence of it...?"
Brandon frowned a little and looked down at his own glass. "No. I hadn't told him."
“At all?"
“No."
"Oh. So...seeing them was the first time he knew of it."
"Yeah."
"Is he mad?"
"No. I asked that, too." Brandon shrugged. "He said he was surprised, and I told him the reason I hadn't told him is because it was just—it was so long ago, and it was barely a thing then and sure as hell isn't now, so it's not like he had to know." He snorted then. "He suggested we have her charged with extortion. Believe me, I thought about it." He paused. "I'm still thinking about it."
"She'll have set something up for them to be released no matter what if you do," Mark said.
Brandon nodded. "I know. That's why I haven't said anything. I guess...like you said, they aren't out now. That we know of. It's been a few minutes." He picked up his phone from the side table and they were silent again for a bit while he did some strategic internet searching. "Don't see anything yet," he said. "Kylen and Abbi and Mikey at least would probably message me the second they saw anything anyway."
"Yeah."
Brandon put his phone back down. "No, Jack isn't mad about it—that it happened or that I never told him. I probably should have, I just...didn't think it was necessary, I guess." He looked up curiously. "Did you tell any of the girls you dated after?"
"No."
There was a long pause, then Brandon asked, "Have you ever told anyone?"
Mark drank some more of his whiskey and noticed, gladly, that it barely burned anymore. "Nope."
"I haven't, either. I never really—I always thought that kinda shit isn't anyone else's business."
"Yeah."
"I kinda even forgot it happened," Brandon said vaguely, looking out toward the dark window. Mark looked down at his drink and finished it. Brandon glanced at him. "You ready?"
"For this shit? No fuckin way."
"For another drink," Brandon said patiently.
Mark nodded and held out his glass; he was ready for quite a few more.
Timeline: January 2017
Title: Futile
Summary: Mark attempts to talk Katelan out of posting the pictures; Brandon joins, and it goes less than ideally.
~4.7k
♫ "Choke" — I DON'T KNOW HOW BUT THEY FOUND ME ♫
Mark had wanted to find a way to smoke up before calling her, to chill his nerves and to stay calm, but Brandon didn't; he wanted to be sharp and on point. He wanted to be angry, Mark thought, which wasn't going to help the situation, but with how completely lost he felt, Brandon's anger would at least be something. He poured himself a drink while Brandon sat in the chair next to the window and glared at her letter again, formulating the script for the call, probably. Mark's stomach did another flip when he thought of her face, of their last conversation when they'd broken up, and he downed it quickly. Out of the corner of this eye, he saw Brandon look at him when he poured another, but he deliberately didn't look back; instead, he held up the other glass, offering.
"Nah," Brandon said immediately. "Maybe after we hang up." He paused. "Probably. You know she's going to piss me off."
"You're already pissed off."
"No shit, aren't you?"
Mark sighed and sipped his new drink. "Yeah," he said. "But it's not going to help. If I get combative with her, she's just going to dig in and there's going to be no hope of actually talking to her, because she'll just focus on winning the fight." Just like someone else they all knew well. "I think it'll be better if I just talk to her," he said again, although Brandon had insisted on being present for this conversation. Mark was sure he had a reason, and it probably was a good one, knowing him, but he was already on edge, chomping at the bit to get in and start swinging.
Brandon made a face, knowing what Mark meant and why he was being asked to, essentially, keep his mouth shut at first. "Fine," he said. "Let's just see how it goes." He held the letter out and, although it was almost the last thing he wanted to do, Mark set the whiskey bottle next to him on the end of the bed, took the letter, picked up his phone, and entered in the number she'd written.
He put the phone on speaker, even though the room was quiet and Brandon had good hearing, because Brandon would get annoyed if he didn't. One ring, two...three...
"Hello," her voice almost sang, bright and cheery.
Mark had no idea how to even start. "Hi, Katelan," he said slowly. "It's Mark."
"Oh, hi, Mark!" she said happily. "So good to hear from you! How are you?"
"Not good," he said.
"Aw," she said. "I'll bet. I'm assuming you got my gift?"
Mark held up a hand as Brandon clenched his jaw and his fists. "It wasn't a gift, Katelan. It was a really shitty thing to do. You never once asked if it was okay to take pictures."
"You would have said no."
"No shit."
"It's better to ask forgiveness than permission," she said sweetly.
"I don't forgive you," he said flatly.
"I'm not asking for either." Her voice turned sharp, businesslike. "I assume you've read my letter. Do I get to assume why you're calling?"
"Why not, you assumed all sorts of other shit."
"Sure," she said comfortably. "I can't spend my whole life waiting around for other people to pick and choose what they deem acceptable. I assume that you don't want me to post the pictures."
"No."
"Great." Her voice brightened again. "Then I assume my check will be in the mail."
"No."
"You have two options, Mark. You have to choose one."
Brandon made a fist and lightly rubbed at his chest, and Mark knew that he didn't have heartburn—having spent a lot of time around Brandon with his little siblings when they were all so much younger, Mark recognized it as one of the ASL signs the kids were all taught early on: I'm sorry.
"Look, I'm sorry for how things ended between us," he told the phone. "I know how upset you were." He paused, not liking the next part, but Brandon had assured him that this wasn't about the truth right now, it was about what she wanted to hear because she held the power. "I treated you badly, and that was wrong. You didn't deserve that."
"That's right," she said, her voice a little softer. "So nice of you to finally realize that."
"I never felt good about the way we ended," he said, and that was true enough. "You felt bad, and I caused that. I'm sorry."
"Good," she said. "Is Brandon sorry, too?"
Mark held up his hand to quiet him again as he spread his hands, indignant. "Should he be? He didn't do anything."
"He did plenty," she said, her voice now hard.
"Like what?" Mark was honestly puzzled by this. "He only ever did what we asked him to."
"That you asked him to."
That you asked me to ask him to, Mark thought, but he didn't want to get into a 'No, you!', 'No, you!' argument with her. "Okay, and?"
"And! Stealing my boyfriend away doesn't count?"
I did not! Brandon mouthed. He wasn't going to keep quiet for much longer. "Come on, he didn't do anything like that," Mark said.
"Fucking my boyfriend when I wasn't around?" Katelan said acidly. "That doesn't count?"
Shit. Mark had forgotten that Brandon didn't know that she'd known about that. His eyebrows went up and he looked at Mark. "That was my fault," Mark said, again to the phone. "I started it." Not every time they'd messed around without her being present, but...mostly.
"And are you sorry for that, too?"
Before he could help it, Mark's mind flashed back to one night after they'd stayed up way too late smoking and writing songs while Brandon was house-sitting in this big empty duplex that had a great open room with amazing acoustics. Brandon had offered to him to stay over; Brandon had offered for him to sleep in the bed. Mark had lain next to him and could only think about sex, and not just sex, but sex with him. He had suggested it without a second thought and Brandon had agreed almost before he was done asking. "Yeah," he said, but when Brandon frowned a little at him, he didn't know if it was because he'd hesitated a little too long, or if he thought he shouldn't be. What she wanted to hear, not truth, Mark thought, and threw back some more of his drink.
"I don't think you are," Katelan said.
"Well...I am."
"Then not sorry enough," she said crisply. "I think it's a good thing that I managed to get so many shots of you two. It was for my amusement then, and has kept me pretty well entertained for these last few years, but they've turned out to be pretty good insurance too, huh? So. Behind door number one, you pay me what I'm owed, and we all move on. Behind door number two, I post them all, for everyone's amusement. And let me tell you, some of the ones I held back? Very amusing. Oh, look at this one. It's almost adorable how hard you tried to learn how to suck a dick, how much effort you really put into making him cum."
What the fuck, Brandon mouthed, staring hard at the phone, and Mark only shook his head. She was looking at them now? "Um," he said. "That was what you wanted, don't forget. All of it was your idea. I agreed for you."
"Didn't take much convincing," she almost sang. "You wanted it. You loved it. As is evidenced in this one: oh, the look on your face as he stuck it in you. You even have your arms around his neck, that's so sweet. This one here's a great cum shot—he fucked you so good that you could hardly stand it. I remember this one: you kept moaning his name over and over as he slammed you and you started to cum, 'Oh, Brandon, oh—'"
"Stop it!" Brandon snapped. Mark wearily drained the rest of his whiskey.
"Oh. He is there with you. Hi, Brandon," she said, her voice a little louder.
Mark looked at him, and Brandon set his jaw. "Katelan," he said.
"Of course he's there," she said, and laughed. "Still inseparable, you two. Oh, Mark. You were so in love with him that I'm honestly surprised you're not together now."
"Huh?" Mark looked up from his empty glass and blinked. Brandon gave him an I don't know what the fuck is going on shrug.
"You were in love with him," she repeated. "Totally head over heels. Or ankles in the air, whichever you prefer."
"Jesus," Brandon said. "Not everybody that fucks is fucking in love. Some fucking women." He rolled his eyes.
"Maybe not, but he was in love with you."
"No, I wasn't," Mark said. This was a real conversation they were having. He was getting so tired.
"Yes, honey, you were. Probably still are. I could even see it then, although it took me way too long to figure out what it was."
"I'm not," he said, again trying not to let complete bafflement at this being their current argument sidetrack them. "Don't you think I'd know if I was?" It was about the most ridiculous thing he'd ever heard. He could feel out for just about anyone he'd ever met, and it was fucking stupid to think he'd miss something like that. He loved Brandon, sure—he loved all his friends, especially his best friend in the world, closer than anyone else. Literally. Well. He'd been right, though—fucking around for fucking's sake was all it had been, and it was well into the past. Neither of them had even thought of it in probably five years. Mark knew he hadn't.
"No, not right away," Katelan said. "It's so ingrained that I wouldn't be surprised if you still didn't get it or realize what it was."
"That's just stupid," Brandon complained. "You haven't even seen any of us in five years, how the fuck would you know what we think about anything?"
"I saw it then." She paused. "We talked after you ended it. I saw everything." She paused again. "So, I ended it."
"Yeah, this is clearly all done and closed up," Mark muttered.
Brandon ignored him and went back at Katelan. "One second you're saying it's a weird love thing and next it's so subtle no one can even figure it out. Make up your fucking mind, or quit making shit up."
"I'm making up nothing—merely reporting what I saw."
"Your hot mess fucking delusions are cutting exactly zero ice with the rest of your goddamn bullshit right now," Brandon snapped.
Mark wanted them to stop arguing, but he also wanted another drink; he glanced at the bottle, thinking for a second to actually make one of those options happen, but he'd have to either put the phone down or give it to Brandon, at which point he was pretty sure he wouldn't get it back until the smoking remains of their band scented their futures.
"He didn't know that he wanted you to fuck him until I came along, but he sure did, didn't he?"
"Whatever," Mark said, wanting to forestall at least one of their sidetracks. "You can think what you want. I apologized for how we ended, I apologize for everything else that happened between us. I'm sorry, okay? I guess—maybe it was your idea, but maybe I took it too far? And that's my fault."
"The first step is admitting your problem," she said, satisfied.
He rolled his eyes. "Okay, so...I admit it, then. I was wrong. It was my fault we broke up and my fault you felt bad about it." He paused. "Can you just...take that as it is?"
"And...not post the pictures?" she asked shrewdly.
"Yeah."
"No."
"Katelan—"
"Look, there's just no way we can get you millions of fucking dollars," Brandon cut in, as Mark knew that he would. "It's just not possible, not even if we wanted to. We haven't even made that much yet, and we might not ever. You're just being insane. It by itself was really shitty thing to do, and it's even worse to try blackmailing us about it for so much that we literally can't do."
There was a long pause. "Even if you wanted to," Katelan repeated, her voice soft, and Mark frowned, thinking that something was wrong with her tone.
"Well," Brandon said. He looked at Mark, and Mark just looked back at him, not knowing what the fuck to say in any case. "How do we know you won't just post them anyway? Even if we did get you that ridiculous amount?"
"I'm not the untrustworthy one," she said, her voice still measured.
"Really?" Brandon demanded. "What do you call taking sneaky fucking pictures of people when they don't know about it and threatening them with revenge porn to liven up your shitty, boring life?"
"If either of you would have been able to tear your eyes away from each other for two seconds, you would have seen me doing it," she said. "It just goes to prove my point."
"All it proves is that you're pissed off at Mark for somehow treating you badly, which he didn't even really do, and blaming him for everything and playing the victim, when you're not so innocent yourself."
"Chill," Mark said quietly, holding up his hand again. Brandon was highly agitated now, glaring and clenching his fists again. He was going to call her a cunt or something in the next few minutes, and then everything would go to hell.
"Yes, you'd better listen to him," Katelan said. "Don't forget, Brandon, that I hold all the cards in this hand. You have nothing." She paused. "Except my money. Now, I'm willing to talk, of course—I'm not unreasonable. That's why I sent you guys my phone number. Have you talked about it?" Her voice brightened. "How much am I really getting?"
They hadn't, beyond the impossibility of her original demand, but Mark had checked his bank account before Brandon had come to his room to discuss calling her. He knew damn well that he didn't want her to get a penny, but they really might have to make a choice here.
"How about the good feeling of not blackmailing people that have been out of your life for five years?" Brandon suggested. "Especially someone that's apologized to you several times already?"
"You haven't."
Brandon opened his mouth and Mark held up his hand again, knowing damn well that the next words out of his mouth were going to be something along the lines of I'm sorry that you're such a bitch. "Katelan, come on," he said. "It—that's really going to fuck up everything for us. And not just us, we're not the only guys in the band. The others don't deserve it. This is our lives. Why does something that happened so long ago have to be a thing now? I'm sorry. Can't you let it go?" He paused, knowing that Brandon was going to hate him saying it, but he was very afraid now that it was a lost cause already. "Please?"
"No," she said softly. "I didn't deserve what you did. I didn't deserve feeling stupid when I realized how much you two were fucking each other together behind my back. I didn't deserve being pushed off to the side when he was all you cared about; when the only reason you'd come to see me was so that you could call him over. I didn't deserve watching you wait for him to come over to fuck you without a single thought to being with me—for you to practically forget about even wanting to have sex with me at all in those last few weeks. All you wanted was him. Fine. I deserve something back. My insurance requires it."
"Katelan...I can't—we can't—"
"Can't and won't are different. You don't even want to try, do you? Does part of you maybe want me to post them?"
"No!" Mark and Brandon shouted at the same time.
Katelan made a little 'hmm' noise. "Last chance to make me a reasonable offer, then. Even if you wanted to."
"We'll sue you," Brandon said. "Do you not get that? It's fucking illegal."
"You fucked my boyfriend; I can fuck the law."
"You really don't care if you lose every last penny and any chance of owning a house or car for the rest of your life."
"I doubt you can do that much damage. I'm just a sad little regular person, not a millionaire rock star."
"For the last time—"
"No, Brandon, I do not care if you threaten to sue me. Or if you do. This will fuck you up far more than that will fuck me up. You decide if we all sink or swim."
"What do you want?" Mark asked, at the same time Brandon muttered, "I don't trust her."
Pause. "What did you say, Brandon?" she asked sharply.
Mark looked at him and shook his head to forestall him answering. "He didn't say anything. I asked what you wanted. Reasonably, I guess. I have some I can send you, I have—"
"No, he said something. If it's good enough to make little comments under your breath, it's good enough to say out loud. Brandon?"
"I said that I don't trust you," he said grimly. "I don't see how you can expect me to," he went on, speaking fast now. "Anyone that takes sneaky little pictures and then uses them for blackmail is a manipulative, conniving, two-faced fucking cunt that will never have anything that you don't take from someone else."
"Stop," Mark said loudly.
There was a long pause then and Mark closed his eyes. "Okay," Katelan said, and Mark's eyes flew open again at the iciness there. "You two had your chance." She paused. "You may have fucked each other, but I'm going to fuck you both."
Mark opened his mouth, but the words in it died as his phone screen started flashing the 'end call' time. He looked up at Brandon, his eyes wide, and saw the fury in his. "Fucking bitch!" Brandon spat. "Shit! Call her back," he demanded. When Mark didn't move, he snatched the phone out of his hand and tried to do it himself. The call was rejected, no option to leave a voicemail. He swore again and tried again with the same result. At the third try, the call didn't connect: Mark's number had been blocked. He pulled out his own phone and grabbed for the letter with her number written on it, starting to tap it out and having to retry when his hands, shaking with rage and horror, hit the wrong number twice. Mark wanted to tell him to try a text first, but a few seconds later they both stared down at his phone as well, the 'unable to connect' message glaring back up at them after only two rings; she had blocked this new caller as well, of course knowing who it would be.
Brandon nearly slammed the phone down on the side table, then leaned forward with his elbows on his knees and his hands in his hair. "Fuck. Fuck."
Mark just poured himself another drink, which he polished off immediately. He got up to get some ice and poured another, reached for the other glass and upended it, poured a vodka rocks, and handed that one back without looking; he felt Brandon take it and heard the ice clink as he upended it. "How long do we have," he asked dully.
"I don't know," Brandon said, almost biting the words out. "She could be posting them right now. She probably is. Fucking whore."
Mark leaned against the little hotel desk where the ice bucket and booze had been set and gulped at his new (fourth? Fifth? He'd had at least one before Brandon showed up and couldn't keep track any more) drink. "I guess it's good that we're not all really famous yet. We're not opening still, but co-headlining isn't headlining. There's that."
"Is that supposed to make me feel better?" Brandon snapped at him.
Mark thought that he might have been irritated at that—this all was not his fault, although if it was anyone's other than Katelan's, he supposed that, yeah, it was—but his drinks were catching up with him and while he was getting a pretty good buzz on, he wasn't happy about it. He just felt dulled, like a steam roller had had its way with him. "Apparently not," he said.
"We finally got signed to an actual, real label. If we don't pull through, everything they've invested in us will be trash and we'll get dropped." Brandon stared moodily down at his glass when Mark didn't have anything to say to that, then he drained it and held it out. "Sorry," he said when Mark took it and began refilling it. "I shouldn't be pissed off at you. I'm just...really...pissed off. Not only that it's apparently happening, but that there isn't a goddamn thing we can do about it now. She was never going to listen to reason. Some of the shit she said? She's fucking delusional. That was a wasted call."
Mark nodded, adding a couple more ice cubes to his glass and holding up the Smirnoff bottle until it was full. "I thought it might have been. But I guess we had to try."
"Fuck," Brandon muttered as he took his new drink. "Fuck her. Fucking manipulative pig." He glanced up. "If you don't care, I'm just going to stay here and swear for the next hour or so. There's nothing else I can do, and I'm not going back to my room—Jack's there, and he doesn't deserve for me to come in ranting and raving and scaring the shit out of him. None of this is his fault."
Sure, it's mine, Mark thought, but he just nodded. He shouldn't have allowed Brandon to be there while he called her. He should have offered her the figure in his mind sooner, he should have made sure she was okay when she broke up with him and he left—because she was hurt, he'd known it then and he sure as hell knew it now. He didn't know if even a little bit more effort on his part, all those years ago, would have helped her not to grow such resentment for so long. Maybe—probably—he should have left her suggestion by the side of the road that day, not thought about it any farther than the first time she brought it up. If he'd never thought about it, never mentioned it to Brandon, never talked about it seriously, never invited him over that first time...
"We have to think about how we're going to handle this," Brandon said after a few minutes of silent drinking. "It's going to come up and we're going to get asked about it. You're going to get asked about it—about a lot of shit, like, 'Are you gay?'" He glanced at Mark. "You have to know that no matter how many times you say no, they're going to keep asking anyway. People are fucking idiots and will never take in new information when they're already set on how they think the world works."
"I know," Mark told his glass.
"A lot of people are going to think the same shit she does and not let it go. Hopefully not everyone, but not everyone gets the 'for the literal fuck of it' aspect."
"Yeah."
"Should we get everyone together and let them know it's coming? Not just Andrew and Keith, but Karney with PR, Peter and Josh and Ashley, everyone that's involved with the band?"
Mark winced at the idea of having to make an announcement like that. "Can we just, I don't know, see if she changes her mind?"
Brandon gave him a get real look. "Can you be serious?"
"I am. Maybe I don't want to get everyone together and talk about this shit that's in the past, and start waiting around for the rest of the shit to hit the fan, only for them never to come up because she was playing with us."
"Do you really get that feeling?"
"No," Mark said softly, tilting his glass this way and that, so that the ice slid around. The original cubes were barely slivers now; he'd finished off each drink too quickly for them to properly melt. "But I wouldn't put it past her. She could be unpredictable. She liked to figure out exactly what you expected of her and then do the opposite. She could just be making us sweat. Or, yeah, she's planning to post them. But maybe not for a few months or even longer." He shrugged and looked up to see the doubtful look on Brandon's face that he knew would be there. "This isn't our first tour. This isn't our first album. We just did our third Warped run last summer and we were advertised as one of the headliners for months and she didn't say or do anything until now. Fuck, when I first saw that there were pictures, for half a second I even wondered if she was suing me for paternity for some kid I never knew about. How do we know that she won't just enjoy us knowing that they exist, and that she could release them at any moment, for years? Like the five years she's had them."
"I guess we don't," Brandon said, but he pretty clearly didn't believe that would be the case. Mark didn't either, honestly, but the idea of having to deal with the repercussions of any of this before they absolutely had to was making his head hurt again.
They drank in silence for a while longer. Brandon got up and made his next drink (less ice and more vodka) and he held his hand out for Mark's glass, which wasn't empty at that exact moment, but was a couple of seconds later. "How much is this going to fuck with everything?" Mark asked then.
Brandon shrugged and gave him his new drink. "Depends on how much people care. If it gets so that we're not making guarantees on tour shit like ticket sales and merch and then album sales or streams, we really could get dropped. It's touch and go when you're new. Everyone already knows I'm gay so it's not like they're going to stop coming to shows just for that." He sat down and sipped his new drink again. "Like, personally, it'll affect us as much as we let it, probably. I think...if we try to shut it down, just play it off and then don't talk about it, just wait for the fans and everyone else to get a hold of whichever new story there will be...maybe it won't be that bad. Maybe we can just move on and everyone will forget about it. It's not like it happened last week, it was five fucking years ago. It's literally old news and has less than zero bearing on the present. Maybe it'll just be like, yeah, it happened, but it's not a thing, so, so what?" He snorted. "That would show that two-faced bitch. She's a fucking snake."
That made Mark think of something Brandon had said earlier, something he'd reminded himself to ask about after he'd initially brought the envelope over. "Um...did you talk to Jack about it? Like—I guess I don't know if you told him a while ago that it happened, but actually seeing the evidence of it...?"
Brandon frowned a little and looked down at his own glass. "No. I hadn't told him."
“At all?"
“No."
"Oh. So...seeing them was the first time he knew of it."
"Yeah."
"Is he mad?"
"No. I asked that, too." Brandon shrugged. "He said he was surprised, and I told him the reason I hadn't told him is because it was just—it was so long ago, and it was barely a thing then and sure as hell isn't now, so it's not like he had to know." He snorted then. "He suggested we have her charged with extortion. Believe me, I thought about it." He paused. "I'm still thinking about it."
"She'll have set something up for them to be released no matter what if you do," Mark said.
Brandon nodded. "I know. That's why I haven't said anything. I guess...like you said, they aren't out now. That we know of. It's been a few minutes." He picked up his phone from the side table and they were silent again for a bit while he did some strategic internet searching. "Don't see anything yet," he said. "Kylen and Abbi and Mikey at least would probably message me the second they saw anything anyway."
"Yeah."
Brandon put his phone back down. "No, Jack isn't mad about it—that it happened or that I never told him. I probably should have, I just...didn't think it was necessary, I guess." He looked up curiously. "Did you tell any of the girls you dated after?"
"No."
There was a long pause, then Brandon asked, "Have you ever told anyone?"
Mark drank some more of his whiskey and noticed, gladly, that it barely burned anymore. "Nope."
"I haven't, either. I never really—I always thought that kinda shit isn't anyone else's business."
"Yeah."
"I kinda even forgot it happened," Brandon said vaguely, looking out toward the dark window. Mark looked down at his drink and finished it. Brandon glanced at him. "You ready?"
"For this shit? No fuckin way."
"For another drink," Brandon said patiently.
Mark nodded and held out his glass; he was ready for quite a few more.