2020-04-24 05:00![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
threedimensions
threedimensionsDimensions: [1-2]
Timeline: February 2017
Title: Critical
Summary: Jack forces Brandon to discuss the situation, including asking if he should leave.
~3k
Brandon saw the message immediately after Ashley gave him back his phone, and he knew that it couldn't be good. How often were "Please return as soon as you are available, there is something we need to discuss" types of messages good? At this point, he thought he could only hope that it wasn't as bad as 'we need to talk and now' could be. He'd been hoping a lot lately, and it hadn't been working out so far.
He told Ashley to forward him any new schedule changes or developments, though those were few and far between now that the tour dates were almost up. That was almost good—for once in his life, he couldn't wait for it to be over, to go home and get out of the spotlight. He knew he wasn't the only one.
He grabbed an Uber directly back to the hotel and went right up to their room, not even considering grabbing something to eat. He hadn't been very hungry lately in any case, and Jack wouldn't have asked him to come right back if it wasn't important. He could order in something later if he really wanted. He stepped out of the elevator and headed down the hall, glancing at room numbers for the one he'd checked into with Jack that morning.
Jack was waiting for him, and he didn't move from the chair or say anything while Brandon gave him a tired smile and toed off his shoes. He was exhausted and wanted a shower, though he still didn't consider any food, and judging by the copy of the magazine that was on the side table next to Jack's chair, he could go ahead and pour himself a drink right now. He would have preferred a smoke, and a big one, but he absolutely didn't want to give them all even further negative press by getting the fire department called when the more advanced smoke detectors the bigger hotel chains had started installing last year would bray if he even looked at his lighter. There were edibles, of course, but he'd found in the past that he didn't like them nearly as much: they took too long to kick in, the effect was milder, and he liked the ritual and actions of smoking, of puff puff pass, of the snap of the lighter and inhale/exhale of the misty cloud that took away his recent anxieties. God, why couldn't this idiot country just legalize it in every state? He could find a way if he really wanted—Ashley got it for them and would know where they could go and who they could bribe—but first, there was this. And he was already so tired.
At least the room Jack had registered them in came equipped with a pretty good compliment of airplane liquor bottles. He selected a glass, added ice, went ahead and grabbed a five dollar six-ounce bottle of orange juice (normally he didn't go for it, but he could feel himself starting to crash from the adrenaline of the show and wanted the sugar), and dumped in the entire Smirnoff miniature. Jack waited while he did all this and finally sat on the edge of the bed, facing him. Brandon looked at him and tried to say something, but his eyes darted to that horrible magazine front cover and its even more terrible picture of Mark, and instead he drank off half of the contents of his glass at a gulp.
"Sorry," he said to the empty silence between them. "I got back as soon as I could. We went on a little late—sound issue. Everything turned out okay. We were all fine—played as good as ever. Andrew wasn't paying attention and almost missed his line in 'Drain' but the crowd helped him out. So..." He looked down at his glass and made himself just look, not knock back the rest of it already. "I was wondering if you'd read that."
"Yes," Jack said quietly. "I was not going to."
"Why did you?"
Jack didn't reply for a moment, but from the angle of his head, Brandon thought that he might be looking at the cover, or trying to. "It seems that he was not in control of himself when this took place," he said slowly, not an answer to the question, but a continuation of his beginning statement. "That he was badgered into it."
"Sure he was," Brandon said, scowling. "You can tell that he was fucking drunk the entire time, even before it started. They even printed how many times that Carper asshole kept pushing more drinks on him." He paused. "That was stupid. I would have edited that out, but I guess they're trying to prove its validity by their transparency, or some shit. I'm considering if they can be sued over it. I just barely mentioned it to Peter when he wanted a check-in and he asked right away if I wanted him to get in touch with the label's lawyers or hire one independently or what."
"But...in light of recent developments...I thought that I should."
Brandon closed his eyes, exhaled, finished his drink. He probably shouldn't be drinking, especially with what had just happened to Mark a couple of weeks ago, but with not being able to have a smoke and all of this shit teetering on the precipice of crashing down and crushing him, he needed something.
"What do you think you should do?" Jack asked.
Brandon opened his eyes and sighed. "Am I supposed to do something? If I am, I have absolutely no idea what that's supposed to be. I don't know what anyone actually expects of me right now. I feel like everyone is looking at me all the time waiting for me to act, but I—there's—I don't fucking know."
"What do you want to do?" Jack reiterated gently.
"I don't know that, either. I want..." He shrugged. "I want everything to be okay again. I don't see how anything I can do is going to make that happen. I'll just make it worse."
There was a long silence, long enough that Brandon was just thinking it had been bare seconds long enough to be okay for him to get another drink, when Jack said, "I should leave?"
"What?" Brandon's head snapped back up to him, and what he saw scared him: Jack had taken off his sunglasses and was looking right at him. That meant that he was all in, every ounce of his effort was being engaged, every vulnerability unmasked. He meant it. "What are you talking about?" Brandon asked, his heart beating harder and every nerve on point. "I don't want you to go anywhere."
Jack's eyes flicked away—even after all this time, he still could only hold eye contact for short bursts—but then they came back. "I talked with Andrew," he began.
Brandon cut in immediately. "Did he tell you to say that?" he demanded. "I'm going to kill him. I swear to god, if I have to put up with his Advice Sage bullshit one more time..."
"No," Jack said. "He listened to my concerns and advised me to speak with you."
"Oh. Okay." Brandon looked back down at the empty glass in his hand and tried to calm himself down. "So...where are you getting this 'leave' idea?" He frowned. "Am I indicating that I want you to? If I am, I'm really sorry and I don't mean to."
Jack didn't respond for a long time. Brandon could tell that he was thinking, and this subject—this talk—was going about as badly as he thought it might, so he got up and grabbed the second Smirnoff miniature and the rest of the bottle of OJ. He hadn't seen any when he'd done his first visual sweep of the fridge, but he checked again for Sprite, saw none, and dumped in the rest of the orange juice.
"This..." Jack said, picking up the magazine with the bullshit interview while Brandon used a coffee stirrer next to the small pot on the counter to quickly mix up his screwdriver. Brandon glanced toward him and then averted his eyes from it, instead going back to his spot on the bed. "In conjunction with the ambulance and the emergency room." Jack paused again, and then said, very quietly, "That was frightening. Could he have died?"
Brandon hadn't wanted to think about that. He still didn't. Mark didn't die, that was what was important. "I don't know," he mumbled, though that wasn't the truth, and he thought that Jack knew it. "He told Keith that he was going to try to lay off. I think he has been."
"If he cannot?" When Brandon didn't reply to this, Jack nodded and looked back up, and this time Brandon was the one who wanted to flinch away from the eye contact. "You can no longer pretend that nothing is happening," Jack said softly. "This has reached a critical point. Something must be done."
"Something like what?"
Jack's eyes dropped away from him again, and Brandon gripped his glass tightly; the amount of effort Jack was putting forth to keep looking at him impressed how serious he was, but this next part was still too much for him, it seemed. "Do you...want to be with him?" Jack asked softly.
Brandon blinked. "I—" he said, and his mouth worked, trying to say all the words that had dried up in his throat. "You and I were together first," was all he could manage.
"That does not seem to be true," Jack said, but his voice was contemplative, not accusatory.
"It is true," Brandon said. "We've been together for five years. I love you. That means something. It means everything, Jack...are you doubting that? That I love you?"
"No."
"Okay, then...why is this a question?" He heard ice clink in his glass and realized that his hand was shaking enough for the glass to vibrate, and he put both hands around it, looking down at it and willing himself to calm down again. "I would never ask you to leave," he said. "That's not fair to you. None of this is your fault and I love you. Okay?"
"All right," Jack said, but when Brandon looked back up at him, he saw that contemplative look again. "But that is not what I asked." He waited while Brandon replayed their last few lines back in his head, trying to find what the question was. "I am asking what you want," Jack said, and his voice was so gentle that Brandon had to look away from him again. He heard paper rattle and knew that Jack was considering the magazine again. "If you want...if it will make you happy, and help this—this terrible situation...I will go. If you want to be with Mark instead..I will accept that."
It was getting harder to breathe. "Don't...don't you want to be with me?"
"Yes," Jack said quietly. "But that is still not my question. I am asking what you want."
All he could do for a moment was shake his head. Then, finally, his throat stopped aching long enough for him to say, "I want...to be with you."
"He loves you. Very much, it seems."
Brandon couldn't say anything to that, so he drank some more. It was too quickly becoming their default modes. "I...I don't know what I'm supposed to do about that."
"You love him too," Jack said. Brandon looked over at him quickly, about to protest, but Jack shook his head. "I think now that this has been apparent for a while. Had I known about the...pictures incidents...particularly knowing that I...that my presence...interrupted that...and in thinking about the situation now. I don't believe it was ever my place to come between you."
"You didn't," Brandon said at once. "Jack...I chose you. You know that, right? I made the decision to call that quits so that I could get to know you. It wasn't even a sure thing that you'd want to be with me, but I wanted you. This...please stop feeling like this." He was becoming a little frantic and that wouldn't help things at all, not if he made Jack even more anxious about this. "I do not want you to go and I never did."
"You did not have all of the information then," Jack said calmly. "If you had known then? Please," he said, stopping Brandon from interrupting him again. "You did not know then, and thus your choice was made without a crucial bit of information. If you had known then how he felt about you...perhaps if he had known then, and was able to tell you...I don't believe that I would be with you now. Do you sincerely disagree?"
"I don't know," Brandon whispered. "That—it was so long ago. I didn't think about it for so long that I really forgot that it even happened."
"Yes. You've said that."
"You don't believe me?" Brandon asked after a moment. He waited to see if that made him angry, but instead he just felt hollowed out and defeated. "I guess I get that. A lot of people probably don't do that. But I—I messed around with a lot of my friends before I met you, and it didn't mean anything." He was on the point of mentioning how he'd had sex with Andrew too—another that he'd more-or-less forgotten about, but with all of this shit lately he'd thought about all the times he'd fucked around with friends or whomever—but he knew at once that it would absolutely not help his case in the fucking-friends-was-a-one-time-deal department.
"I believe that you put it out of your mind," Jack said slowly.
"But..." Brandon said, when he sensed what Jack didn't say.
Jack dropped his eyes away again. "Please do not get angry," he said softly.
"I won't," Brandon said, making his voice gentle too. "You're trying to help. I recognize that, and I love you for it. I love you. I'm not and I won't be angry with you about this, okay?"
Jack nodded slightly, his eyes on the magazine in his hands again. "You are in denial," he said then. "I have seen this for weeks. I am partially responsible for how out of control this situation has become. I did not bring it to your attention, to make you confront it earlier."
"Whoa," Brandon said, almost whispering so that he wouldn't shout. "Okay. Remember how I said none of this is your fault? That still applies. You're not responsible for the way any of this has come out, and you're not responsible for anyone else's behavior." He paused. "And I'm not in denial. I've known that this was all going downhill ever since I realized that people weren't going to let it go like I kept hoping in the beginning. That bitch and her interviews telling every fucking detail and her goddamn mouth making shit up is just making it worse. How's he ever supposed to get peace when no one will ever leave him alone? I've seen how bad it's been getting." He sighed heavily. "So...it's way more my fault than anyone else's. Especially yours. I should have seen how bad his drinking was getting before it put him in the hospital."
"Have you noticed also how critical his depression has gotten?" Jack asked. "The drinking is a symptom. He is deeply withdrawn. He is self-medicating."
Brandon sighed and forced himself to put his half-full drink on the end table instead of downing the rest of it, as much as he wanted to. "He's withdrawn because people won't leave him alone," he said. "If it's not someone making outright disgusting, asshole comments, it's questions about shit that's none of their business. I guess I—maybe I...maybe I should have talked to him."
"Yes."
"You think I should?"
"Yes."
Brandon nodded, but he didn't move. "I just...I'm trying to give him space," he said. "All of this shit piling up on him would twist anyone up. I don't want to add on. And that..." He raised his eyes to that shitty rag, the horrible, pushy, coercive interview. Wouldn't he just love to punch that guy in the face sixteen or seventeen times. "Even if I do nothing, I'm apparently still fucking with him. I don't know—I don't know why he said he—that he feels that way. He's my friend, Jesus, he's my best friend. I didn't know."
He was on the verge of breaking down about this, fuck, and this was why he refused to think about it. Denial. Right. Self-preservation. He gave himself a moment and took a long, shaky breath.
"I don't know what to do," he said. "Jack. Please. Please don't leave. No matter what, I love you, and you said you believe me. I don't want to lose you. Can you please tell me that you won't go? I don't know what to do about this—all of this—but I'm going to need you to stay with me so that I can figure something out. Okay?"
Jack was looking down at the cover of the magazine again, at the picture that Brandon himself couldn't look at. "All right," Jack said finally, and Brandon closed his eyes in relief. "But...this must be addressed."
Brandon looked up at him and saw that, again, Jack was looking right back at him while indicating the magazine. "Okay," he said. "I'll...I'll address it. Somehow. I...I'll talk to him. I'll figure something out."
Jack nodded, and finally, finally, he put the magazine down (face down) and turned away from it. Brandon realized that he was shaking, not just his hands, but that his legs and arms were trembling too. He held his arms out to Jack, hoping—not only that Jack would come to him and hold him, but that he could hold on to himself, keep himself together, not just right now but for however long this insane ordeal was going to last, long enough to be okay again—and Jack got up from his chair at once. He sat on the edge of the bed next to Brandon and put both arms around him, awkward to be the one giving comfort rather than receiving it, but Brandon only wanted him there, just needed him. Jack held him, and Brandon squeezed back as tightly as he thought he could safely do. He put his face in Jack's neck and tried to focus on nothing but his breathing: not how close he thought he'd come to losing him tonight, not how in the fuck he was supposed to fix this fucked up situation, not how he'd felt when he'd read that interview or how still Mark's face had been when he'd found him collapsed and thought that he might be dead.
"I love you," Jack said, so softly that it was almost like he was afraid of it, like it might be too fragile to last.
Fuck this situation. Fuck it. Fuck everything. Brandon held on to him tighter, refusing to let him go, and just breathed. In. Out. Jack, he thought. What am I going to do?
Timeline: February 2017
Title: Critical
Summary: Jack forces Brandon to discuss the situation, including asking if he should leave.
~3k
Brandon saw the message immediately after Ashley gave him back his phone, and he knew that it couldn't be good. How often were "Please return as soon as you are available, there is something we need to discuss" types of messages good? At this point, he thought he could only hope that it wasn't as bad as 'we need to talk and now' could be. He'd been hoping a lot lately, and it hadn't been working out so far.
He told Ashley to forward him any new schedule changes or developments, though those were few and far between now that the tour dates were almost up. That was almost good—for once in his life, he couldn't wait for it to be over, to go home and get out of the spotlight. He knew he wasn't the only one.
He grabbed an Uber directly back to the hotel and went right up to their room, not even considering grabbing something to eat. He hadn't been very hungry lately in any case, and Jack wouldn't have asked him to come right back if it wasn't important. He could order in something later if he really wanted. He stepped out of the elevator and headed down the hall, glancing at room numbers for the one he'd checked into with Jack that morning.
Jack was waiting for him, and he didn't move from the chair or say anything while Brandon gave him a tired smile and toed off his shoes. He was exhausted and wanted a shower, though he still didn't consider any food, and judging by the copy of the magazine that was on the side table next to Jack's chair, he could go ahead and pour himself a drink right now. He would have preferred a smoke, and a big one, but he absolutely didn't want to give them all even further negative press by getting the fire department called when the more advanced smoke detectors the bigger hotel chains had started installing last year would bray if he even looked at his lighter. There were edibles, of course, but he'd found in the past that he didn't like them nearly as much: they took too long to kick in, the effect was milder, and he liked the ritual and actions of smoking, of puff puff pass, of the snap of the lighter and inhale/exhale of the misty cloud that took away his recent anxieties. God, why couldn't this idiot country just legalize it in every state? He could find a way if he really wanted—Ashley got it for them and would know where they could go and who they could bribe—but first, there was this. And he was already so tired.
At least the room Jack had registered them in came equipped with a pretty good compliment of airplane liquor bottles. He selected a glass, added ice, went ahead and grabbed a five dollar six-ounce bottle of orange juice (normally he didn't go for it, but he could feel himself starting to crash from the adrenaline of the show and wanted the sugar), and dumped in the entire Smirnoff miniature. Jack waited while he did all this and finally sat on the edge of the bed, facing him. Brandon looked at him and tried to say something, but his eyes darted to that horrible magazine front cover and its even more terrible picture of Mark, and instead he drank off half of the contents of his glass at a gulp.
"Sorry," he said to the empty silence between them. "I got back as soon as I could. We went on a little late—sound issue. Everything turned out okay. We were all fine—played as good as ever. Andrew wasn't paying attention and almost missed his line in 'Drain' but the crowd helped him out. So..." He looked down at his glass and made himself just look, not knock back the rest of it already. "I was wondering if you'd read that."
"Yes," Jack said quietly. "I was not going to."
"Why did you?"
Jack didn't reply for a moment, but from the angle of his head, Brandon thought that he might be looking at the cover, or trying to. "It seems that he was not in control of himself when this took place," he said slowly, not an answer to the question, but a continuation of his beginning statement. "That he was badgered into it."
"Sure he was," Brandon said, scowling. "You can tell that he was fucking drunk the entire time, even before it started. They even printed how many times that Carper asshole kept pushing more drinks on him." He paused. "That was stupid. I would have edited that out, but I guess they're trying to prove its validity by their transparency, or some shit. I'm considering if they can be sued over it. I just barely mentioned it to Peter when he wanted a check-in and he asked right away if I wanted him to get in touch with the label's lawyers or hire one independently or what."
"But...in light of recent developments...I thought that I should."
Brandon closed his eyes, exhaled, finished his drink. He probably shouldn't be drinking, especially with what had just happened to Mark a couple of weeks ago, but with not being able to have a smoke and all of this shit teetering on the precipice of crashing down and crushing him, he needed something.
"What do you think you should do?" Jack asked.
Brandon opened his eyes and sighed. "Am I supposed to do something? If I am, I have absolutely no idea what that's supposed to be. I don't know what anyone actually expects of me right now. I feel like everyone is looking at me all the time waiting for me to act, but I—there's—I don't fucking know."
"What do you want to do?" Jack reiterated gently.
"I don't know that, either. I want..." He shrugged. "I want everything to be okay again. I don't see how anything I can do is going to make that happen. I'll just make it worse."
There was a long silence, long enough that Brandon was just thinking it had been bare seconds long enough to be okay for him to get another drink, when Jack said, "I should leave?"
"What?" Brandon's head snapped back up to him, and what he saw scared him: Jack had taken off his sunglasses and was looking right at him. That meant that he was all in, every ounce of his effort was being engaged, every vulnerability unmasked. He meant it. "What are you talking about?" Brandon asked, his heart beating harder and every nerve on point. "I don't want you to go anywhere."
Jack's eyes flicked away—even after all this time, he still could only hold eye contact for short bursts—but then they came back. "I talked with Andrew," he began.
Brandon cut in immediately. "Did he tell you to say that?" he demanded. "I'm going to kill him. I swear to god, if I have to put up with his Advice Sage bullshit one more time..."
"No," Jack said. "He listened to my concerns and advised me to speak with you."
"Oh. Okay." Brandon looked back down at the empty glass in his hand and tried to calm himself down. "So...where are you getting this 'leave' idea?" He frowned. "Am I indicating that I want you to? If I am, I'm really sorry and I don't mean to."
Jack didn't respond for a long time. Brandon could tell that he was thinking, and this subject—this talk—was going about as badly as he thought it might, so he got up and grabbed the second Smirnoff miniature and the rest of the bottle of OJ. He hadn't seen any when he'd done his first visual sweep of the fridge, but he checked again for Sprite, saw none, and dumped in the rest of the orange juice.
"This..." Jack said, picking up the magazine with the bullshit interview while Brandon used a coffee stirrer next to the small pot on the counter to quickly mix up his screwdriver. Brandon glanced toward him and then averted his eyes from it, instead going back to his spot on the bed. "In conjunction with the ambulance and the emergency room." Jack paused again, and then said, very quietly, "That was frightening. Could he have died?"
Brandon hadn't wanted to think about that. He still didn't. Mark didn't die, that was what was important. "I don't know," he mumbled, though that wasn't the truth, and he thought that Jack knew it. "He told Keith that he was going to try to lay off. I think he has been."
"If he cannot?" When Brandon didn't reply to this, Jack nodded and looked back up, and this time Brandon was the one who wanted to flinch away from the eye contact. "You can no longer pretend that nothing is happening," Jack said softly. "This has reached a critical point. Something must be done."
"Something like what?"
Jack's eyes dropped away from him again, and Brandon gripped his glass tightly; the amount of effort Jack was putting forth to keep looking at him impressed how serious he was, but this next part was still too much for him, it seemed. "Do you...want to be with him?" Jack asked softly.
Brandon blinked. "I—" he said, and his mouth worked, trying to say all the words that had dried up in his throat. "You and I were together first," was all he could manage.
"That does not seem to be true," Jack said, but his voice was contemplative, not accusatory.
"It is true," Brandon said. "We've been together for five years. I love you. That means something. It means everything, Jack...are you doubting that? That I love you?"
"No."
"Okay, then...why is this a question?" He heard ice clink in his glass and realized that his hand was shaking enough for the glass to vibrate, and he put both hands around it, looking down at it and willing himself to calm down again. "I would never ask you to leave," he said. "That's not fair to you. None of this is your fault and I love you. Okay?"
"All right," Jack said, but when Brandon looked back up at him, he saw that contemplative look again. "But that is not what I asked." He waited while Brandon replayed their last few lines back in his head, trying to find what the question was. "I am asking what you want," Jack said, and his voice was so gentle that Brandon had to look away from him again. He heard paper rattle and knew that Jack was considering the magazine again. "If you want...if it will make you happy, and help this—this terrible situation...I will go. If you want to be with Mark instead..I will accept that."
It was getting harder to breathe. "Don't...don't you want to be with me?"
"Yes," Jack said quietly. "But that is still not my question. I am asking what you want."
All he could do for a moment was shake his head. Then, finally, his throat stopped aching long enough for him to say, "I want...to be with you."
"He loves you. Very much, it seems."
Brandon couldn't say anything to that, so he drank some more. It was too quickly becoming their default modes. "I...I don't know what I'm supposed to do about that."
"You love him too," Jack said. Brandon looked over at him quickly, about to protest, but Jack shook his head. "I think now that this has been apparent for a while. Had I known about the...pictures incidents...particularly knowing that I...that my presence...interrupted that...and in thinking about the situation now. I don't believe it was ever my place to come between you."
"You didn't," Brandon said at once. "Jack...I chose you. You know that, right? I made the decision to call that quits so that I could get to know you. It wasn't even a sure thing that you'd want to be with me, but I wanted you. This...please stop feeling like this." He was becoming a little frantic and that wouldn't help things at all, not if he made Jack even more anxious about this. "I do not want you to go and I never did."
"You did not have all of the information then," Jack said calmly. "If you had known then? Please," he said, stopping Brandon from interrupting him again. "You did not know then, and thus your choice was made without a crucial bit of information. If you had known then how he felt about you...perhaps if he had known then, and was able to tell you...I don't believe that I would be with you now. Do you sincerely disagree?"
"I don't know," Brandon whispered. "That—it was so long ago. I didn't think about it for so long that I really forgot that it even happened."
"Yes. You've said that."
"You don't believe me?" Brandon asked after a moment. He waited to see if that made him angry, but instead he just felt hollowed out and defeated. "I guess I get that. A lot of people probably don't do that. But I—I messed around with a lot of my friends before I met you, and it didn't mean anything." He was on the point of mentioning how he'd had sex with Andrew too—another that he'd more-or-less forgotten about, but with all of this shit lately he'd thought about all the times he'd fucked around with friends or whomever—but he knew at once that it would absolutely not help his case in the fucking-friends-was-a-one-time-deal department.
"I believe that you put it out of your mind," Jack said slowly.
"But..." Brandon said, when he sensed what Jack didn't say.
Jack dropped his eyes away again. "Please do not get angry," he said softly.
"I won't," Brandon said, making his voice gentle too. "You're trying to help. I recognize that, and I love you for it. I love you. I'm not and I won't be angry with you about this, okay?"
Jack nodded slightly, his eyes on the magazine in his hands again. "You are in denial," he said then. "I have seen this for weeks. I am partially responsible for how out of control this situation has become. I did not bring it to your attention, to make you confront it earlier."
"Whoa," Brandon said, almost whispering so that he wouldn't shout. "Okay. Remember how I said none of this is your fault? That still applies. You're not responsible for the way any of this has come out, and you're not responsible for anyone else's behavior." He paused. "And I'm not in denial. I've known that this was all going downhill ever since I realized that people weren't going to let it go like I kept hoping in the beginning. That bitch and her interviews telling every fucking detail and her goddamn mouth making shit up is just making it worse. How's he ever supposed to get peace when no one will ever leave him alone? I've seen how bad it's been getting." He sighed heavily. "So...it's way more my fault than anyone else's. Especially yours. I should have seen how bad his drinking was getting before it put him in the hospital."
"Have you noticed also how critical his depression has gotten?" Jack asked. "The drinking is a symptom. He is deeply withdrawn. He is self-medicating."
Brandon sighed and forced himself to put his half-full drink on the end table instead of downing the rest of it, as much as he wanted to. "He's withdrawn because people won't leave him alone," he said. "If it's not someone making outright disgusting, asshole comments, it's questions about shit that's none of their business. I guess I—maybe I...maybe I should have talked to him."
"Yes."
"You think I should?"
"Yes."
Brandon nodded, but he didn't move. "I just...I'm trying to give him space," he said. "All of this shit piling up on him would twist anyone up. I don't want to add on. And that..." He raised his eyes to that shitty rag, the horrible, pushy, coercive interview. Wouldn't he just love to punch that guy in the face sixteen or seventeen times. "Even if I do nothing, I'm apparently still fucking with him. I don't know—I don't know why he said he—that he feels that way. He's my friend, Jesus, he's my best friend. I didn't know."
He was on the verge of breaking down about this, fuck, and this was why he refused to think about it. Denial. Right. Self-preservation. He gave himself a moment and took a long, shaky breath.
"I don't know what to do," he said. "Jack. Please. Please don't leave. No matter what, I love you, and you said you believe me. I don't want to lose you. Can you please tell me that you won't go? I don't know what to do about this—all of this—but I'm going to need you to stay with me so that I can figure something out. Okay?"
Jack was looking down at the cover of the magazine again, at the picture that Brandon himself couldn't look at. "All right," Jack said finally, and Brandon closed his eyes in relief. "But...this must be addressed."
Brandon looked up at him and saw that, again, Jack was looking right back at him while indicating the magazine. "Okay," he said. "I'll...I'll address it. Somehow. I...I'll talk to him. I'll figure something out."
Jack nodded, and finally, finally, he put the magazine down (face down) and turned away from it. Brandon realized that he was shaking, not just his hands, but that his legs and arms were trembling too. He held his arms out to Jack, hoping—not only that Jack would come to him and hold him, but that he could hold on to himself, keep himself together, not just right now but for however long this insane ordeal was going to last, long enough to be okay again—and Jack got up from his chair at once. He sat on the edge of the bed next to Brandon and put both arms around him, awkward to be the one giving comfort rather than receiving it, but Brandon only wanted him there, just needed him. Jack held him, and Brandon squeezed back as tightly as he thought he could safely do. He put his face in Jack's neck and tried to focus on nothing but his breathing: not how close he thought he'd come to losing him tonight, not how in the fuck he was supposed to fix this fucked up situation, not how he'd felt when he'd read that interview or how still Mark's face had been when he'd found him collapsed and thought that he might be dead.
"I love you," Jack said, so softly that it was almost like he was afraid of it, like it might be too fragile to last.
Fuck this situation. Fuck it. Fuck everything. Brandon held on to him tighter, refusing to let him go, and just breathed. In. Out. Jack, he thought. What am I going to do?
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