EXPERIENTIA DOCET Dum spiro, spero While I breathe, I hope This Chapter 3 in the "EXPERIENTIA DOCET" series. Narrated by: Brian Kinney Featuring Justin Taylor, Cynthia Morgan, BTVS Cast Members, Blake, and others Series Rated NC-17 and contains no warnings or spoilers. Summary: Brian reflects on the events of Chapter two, and makes some hard decisions. August 2002 Disclaimer: no profit made… The Boys are not mine. No matter how much I’d love to have them… * * * * * * * If anyone asks me days from now what I remember of this meeting, it’ll be the look in Justin’s eyes. If looks could kill…I’d fucking be dead. I know that he’s pissed, and I know that maybe I should’ve told him… but this is business, nothing more nothing less. It has nothing to do with what happened between us this weekend. Nothing at all. But the look on his face said it all. He was not impressed. I definitely got the clue when he stood up, looked me right in the eye and said, “I don’t think so. I wouldn’t be caught dead doing anything for that fucking city, or for Vanguard. So you can forget it.” I watch him as he heads out of the room, and Eric looks at me like he’s sorry that this happened. He doesn’t know what’s going on… well I do, and I’ve got to try and stop Justin before this shit gets too out of hand… okay more than it is already. I stand up and run down the hall spotting him at the elevators. By the time I reach him, however, he’s already shut down on me. “Don’t think about it Brian. Don’t even fucking think about it.” I reach out to grab a hold of his arm, hoping to explain… fuck ... me explain. Explain what? This is business… I’m not sorry that he’s here… that our weekend together was …. Well it was fun. What did I want to say to him? “Justin… listen. I know that this looks bad…” Yeah good one, Kinney… why don’t you peddle that shit elsewhere. Justin turns to face me and gets this look of total disgust on his face. “Looks bad? Looks BAD?!! YOU’RE DAMN RIGHT IT LOOKS BAD.” I try to get him to calm down… I need him to calm down… to think this through rationally. He’s fucking causing a scene right now, and that’s the last thing either one of us needs. He leans in close to me, and I try to stop the sudden urge to pull him close to me. Any thought of that is shot down by his words whispered in my ear. “So now you fuck your clients, hoping that they’ll be some swoony little school girls, and fall all over you? Is that it? You think that just because we fucked that now I’ll just hop right into this deal with you?” Fuck! How the hell do I fix this? He pulls back again and looks at me. “Well listen here, Brian Kinney, fuck you.” Justin presses the button for the elevator, and I know that I’m rapidly losing it here. “Justin just hear me out… please,” I plead. Hell, I’m man enough to know when I fucked up… and I fucked this shit up bad. If only he’ll hear me out, maybe I can fix this. “I don’t think so, Brian. Don’t call me, don’t talk to me, don’t fucking come near me again. You disgust me. I mean it Brian. Don’t ever try to contact me again.” With that he’s gone, into the elevator and out of my life. FUCK! How the hell do I explain to Vance that I didn’t get the fucking account because I fucked the only person that the client wanted? How do I pull a rabbit out of my hat on this one? How the hell do I fix this? Fuck! * * * * * * * I lay awake on the bed in my hotel room, and think. That’s all I can do, really. I have to try and find a way to fix this. But the main question is… what exactly do I want to fix? Do I want to fix this thing with Justin and keep him around, to have what we had this past weekend? Or do I want to fix it enough so that Justin will work on the account under Vanguard? Can I have both? All I know right now, is that it’s going to take a lot of work and planning to get back in somewhat good graces with Justin. And I’m not even sure what it is I want out of it. All I have is the small glimpse into his life that I had the honor of seeing during the weekend… hell, during the week we had known each other. I can’t help but think of what it was like… just being with him. “Brian,” he asks me from the kitchen. I make my way out of the bedroom to stand behind him. Placing my arms around his lean frame, I pull him closer to me. For some reason, I can’t get enough of this kid. “You hungry?” I lean in and place a light kiss on his neck, and begin to trace a line down to his collarbone, while my hands begin to move down toward his hips. “Yeah,” I breathe against his ear before returning to the task at hand. “I meant for food,” Justin laughs, but I can tell that he’s enjoying what I’m doing to him. Just being around him, seeing him, touching him, listening to him; has me almost in a constant state of arousal. No one has ever kept my interest this long, but somehow this kid, this young man is doing just that. I don’t know really when I had decided that I wanted to stay, that I wanted to be with him for a long time, but sometime during that first day it had hit me. I didn’t want this to end. I didn’t want to leave. I briefly wonder if this is what Mikey and the others felt when they were with someone. I don’t know… I’ve never felt this way before, and it’s scaring the hell out of me. All I know is that I’m going to make the most out of the time I have here… as long as he’ll have me. I reach my hand around and begin to stroke his growing erection. “It wasn’t food I was thinking about.” And it sure as hell wasn’t. Justin leans his head back on my shoulder as I continue to stroke him, pressing my own erection against his lower back. “Tell me what you want. Tell me,” I whisper. “Fuck me, Brian. Fuck me hard,” he answers. And I am more than happy to oblige. I push him forward so he is leaning against the refrigerator, allowing his ass to be placed at just the right angle for me. I reach over to where I had placed the supplies and begin to prepare the both of us. “You want me to fuck you, Justin? Ride your ass? Slam into you until you beg me for release,” I ask him, my voice thick with desire – with need. And yes, I need him. I don’t understand it… I don’t know if I want to, but I need this maybe more than Justin does. “Yes… fuck me Brian… please,” he begs. God, I have never wanted anyone the way I want Justin. Never have I spent this long with someone… done as much with anyone as I had with him. What is it about this man that is making me break all of my rules? What is it about Justin that I cannot resist? Pushing those thoughts out of my head for the time being – those are thoughts better left to think about when I’m alone not ready to be inside the beautiful blond before me. I ease my way into him, pulling him back against me the entire time. “Oh God,” he hisses, and I find myself feeling the same way. He feels so fucking good, so hot. His taste… the feel of his skin… everything about him… I just can’t get enough. Slowly, ever so fucking slowly, I begin to pull out right to the tip, then slam back in. “Fuck,” I hiss out myself. The way he feels around me, the way we fit together is just perfect. He knows what to do, what I want without me even asking. It’s like we’ve known each other for years instead of a week. I don’t know how he does it, but it sends a signal straight to my cock… and to another part of my body that I’m DEFINTELY not ready to acknowledge. He squeezes himself around me, and I have to try and remember to breathe as I continue to pump in and out of him. I can feel myself getting close, so I lean into him, and begin to kiss the back of his neck. Reaching around him, I grab his hard shaft and being to jerk him off. I can feel him tighten around me even more, while he erupts in my hand. My own explosion bursting into the condom tip, filling it with my cum. Suddenly, irrationally really, I need to taste him, feel his lips on my own. Pulling out, I turn him around and crush his lips to mine, devouring him. I want to stay like that forever. I want to be here with him, in this moment forever. I need to be here with him. I wake up from the dream…memory really, and sigh. Fuck! I know that I had just spent a fucking load on that damn memory. I remember what it felt like to be inside him, to hold him. I need to feel that again. I remember wondering why I was feeling that way that night. I pushed it aside for later analysis, and maybe now is as good a time as any to try and figure out what in the world all of this means. I know that Justin is incredibly sexy… but the thing that gets me is that he’s not my usual type. I normally don’t go for guys like him. So why in the hell did I do it? Why did I keep coming back? I have never believed in love… never thought that it was for any gay man. It’s just some stupid shit that sells those damn Hallmark cards. But there’s something about Justin Taylor… Something about him that makes me want to be with him. I enjoyed the time we spent together… even the time we weren’t fucking. Here was a man who I could talk to… really talk to, about the unimportant shit. We talked about everything from politics, religions, the latest fucking fashion trend, to the latest books. I think of my so-called friends and I can’t remember a time that I was able to do that with any of them. Yeah, we have fun, but it almost always means going to Babylon or Woody’s. But with Justin… I don’t know. It’s just different. I never wanted to get to know a trick, never wanted to open up to a trick. It has always been just fuck and get out. But something about him… Something about him makes my breath catch, and my heart beat faster. I actually – dare I say – feel complete and safe in his arms. I can honestly say that I slept better that weekend than I had in my entire life… well not including the drug induced slumbers. And if I could put it off on drugs, or alcohol I would, but we never touched the stuff all weekend. So what was it about him that made me feel so safe… so … cared for? Dare I fucking say, so … so loved? * * * * * * * Here I am fucking sitting in my office in LA, still trying to come up with some way to fix this shit. Trying to come up with some way to get Justin to do this damn ad for us. Hoping beyond hope that maybe I can just get him to fucking talk to me again. “Mr. Kinney, Mr. Taylor’s personal assistant is here to see you,” Cynthia informs me. Maybe I’ll have my chance to get some idea on how to continue with this… how to fix this. “Let him in,” I tell her. The door opens as I turn to put away the file I was looking at. “Please sit down,” I begin. I look up at the Justin’s assistant, and fucking freeze in my spot. “What the fuck are you doing here?” Blake… as in ‘Ted’s Blake’, the fucking drug addict who had almost killed Ted… that Blake. “As your assistant told you, I’m Mr. Taylor’s personal assistant, and I think we need to have a talk. Don’t you?” he says as he sits down in the chair in front of me. I lean back in my chair and look right at him. “And what in the world would you have to talk to me about? And for that matter what the hell are you doing here? Ran out of dealers in Pittsburgh?” I expected him to get defensive, and I was mildly surprised when he just looked at me unfazed. “Not that it matters a damn bit, but I’ve been clean for a year now… thanks to Justin.” That last little bit does surprise me. I didn’t know that the two men had known each other, and I sure as hell didn’t understand why Justin would help Blake out. I keep my mask in place – thank God – as I continue to wait for him to get to why he’s here. “In fact, I’m Justin’s roommate. I’m the one who wasn’t there this past weekend… I’m the one who he cried to last night. I only wish he had told me about you before, so that I could’ve warned him… maybe saved him some fucking grief. But that’s in the past isn’t it? The fact of the matter is… he is hurt, and you’re the reason why.” “So what… you’ve come to protect Justin’s honor? What a load of crap. Like you have any virtue. Fuck… get the hell out of my office,” I tell him. I don’t need this drug addict to tell me where the fuck I went wrong. And now I find out that he’s living with Justin. Any chance that I had to fix this shit just flew out the window with Blake’s appearance. I can just imagine what he’s telling Justin about me. “I don’t care what you think of me, Brian,” Blake tells me. Yeah right. He doesn’t care? I don’t buy it, but I’ll listen to what he has to say… at least for another minute or so. “What you should be thinking about is how you are going to fix things between Justin and yourself.” “Why would you care,” I ask, honestly intrigued. Blake stood from the chair and walked over to the window so he could look out over the city skyline. “Justin doesn’t know I’m here. But I can tell you that he was beginning to have some sort of feelings for you. He’s never been one to go half-way in something. With Justin it’s all or nothing.” Blake takes a deep breath and I watch as he looks down at his hands. “And for some strange reason he wants you.” I have to laugh at that. Here is Blake – a guy whom I never really paid any attention to – telling me a bunch of shit that he has no idea about. “Some strange reason? What the fuck are you talking about?” Blake still didn’t look at me, only continued to stare out the window. “I remember hearing from Ted, a story about how you had saved some kid… well tried to anyway. This kid was attacked in a garage near this movie theatre. Of course this wasn’t well known, and Ted had only found out by accident. But it amazed me that you could do something like that.” Just hearing Blake describe that night all those years ago, brings a sharp pain to my chest. I had worked hard to forget that night, forget what had happened, and now this little fucking asshole wants to bring it all back up. “I didn’t think anything of it again until about a year ago,” he continues interrupting anything that I might have said. “What the fuck are you talking about,” I ask him through clenched teeth. “When I had meet Justin, and after I had moved in with him… I asked him one night why he had left his home. I mean he came from a good family, a good neighborhood; he had everything that I could’ve ever asked for. Imagine my surprise when he told me about a night that had changed his life forever. A night about three years ago, when some kid attacked him with a baseball bat outside of a movie theatre in Pittsburgh.” Suddenly hearing Blake confirm the very fear, the very thought that I’ve been having since I meet Justin, frightens me. I remember Justin telling me about something that had happened to him, but he didn’t go into detail. I guess a part of me prayed that it wasn’t him… didn’t want to believe that this was the same person. But now, my fears have been confirmed. Justin is the same kid that I saw walking down the street with his friend. He is the same kid who I saw get a bat to the head… the same one whose blood I was covered in. Fuck! “I didn’t know,” I whispered. Justin had told me this past weekend about a time he thought he had found his soul mate… and everything that he had described I had felt once before for a brief moment. A moment that had been taken away from me by a homophobic asshole with a bat. “I just want to know something… if you had a chance to make things right between the two of you… would you? Do you care about him at all?” I sit there, still in shock, trying to think of an answer. I don’t know what to say… what to do. “Yes, I want to make things right,” I tell him, answering the first question. I reach up and run my hand down my face, trying to think. I need to answer him honestly, but I don’t know what the hell is going on. How can I answer him, if I don’t know? “I care about him,” I tell him. “And maybe there could be something more… I don’t know. I’ve never felt this way before,” I say honestly. I just don’t know what to think about what I was feeling… what I am feeling. How can you answer a question like that when you don’t know what that feeling really is, what it means? “Good,” Blake states as me moves from the window and toward the door. “If you mean that, if you really want to try… I’ll help you. Just don’t make me regret it.” I look up at Blake, standing by the door, and shrug. “So what do I do?” “I’ll be in touch,” Blake told me with a small smile on his lips. “All I ask is that you’ll try… and don’t hurt him again. I can tell you that if there is one thing that Justin hates, its liars.” “Blake…thanks,” I tell him as he opens the door and walks out of my office. I know he’ll keep his word… that he’ll contact me. Something about the way he said it makes me believe. * * * * * * * ‘What a fucking joke! Trying to act all fucking big and bad…. What a fucking low ass bottom if I ever did see.’ Okay so tonight’s tick wasn’t the greatest in the world… hell he wasn’t even close to being in the top 80%… I must have really been desperate. I hate it when I think that I might actually get some satisfaction out of this shit… Is this what my life was supposed to have been like? Don’t fucking think about it… stop that shit right now. Why is it that I always get fucking sentimental on my birthday… it’s just any other day? Any other day for Jack to take out the bottle… drink a few… and take his worthlessness out on me. Yeah… Happy Fucking Birthday to me. As I walk down the street I pull out a cigarette and take a deep breath. I need to go back to Babylon and find someone that’s worth someone. I feel something course through me, and I have no idea what it is. When I look up to where I get the feeling from I spot two kids, two teens walking down the street toward me, laughing. I shake my head and continue down the sidewalk toward my car. I see the two kids enter the parking garage close to the theatre -- where I had parked my jeep. I can still see them as I enter the garage myself, and I silently take note that the strange feeling I had earlier is still there. Out of the corner of my eye I catch sight of something moving around in the shadows. I look back toward the teens, and watch as the boy pauses in his walk. He starts to turn toward me, and another feeling creeps into my body…”Look out,” I cry. But it’s too late. I spot that the shadow had already crept up behind the boy, and swung something toward his head. The sound of something hitting the kid’s head echoed though the place. I ran as quickly as I could, hearing the screams of his friend, the curses of the man with the object still in his hands, ready to strike again. I reach them just as the man takes another swing toward the young teen laying on the ground. I barely make it in time to push the man to the ground, sending the object flying away from his hands. Picking it up, I smash him in the knee, sending him flying toward the ground crying out in pain. I turn to the teen on the ground… blood pouring out of the side of his head. “Call 911,” I tell the girl handing her my cell phone, as I bend down to try and see if the kid was even alive. Finding a pulse, I reach in my pocket for something to stop the flow of blood. “Why,” I ask, pulling the young man closer to me hoping to keep him warm. The girl looks over at the other man, who was still on the floor holding his injured knee. “He hates the fact that Justin’s gay. He’s been picking on him all year… I didn’t think… Is he going to be okay?” Justin’s gay… he was attacked because he was gay… I’ve heard the stories... but I didn’t think that it would happen like this. I never thought I would see something like this before. I pull the kid closer to me, willing the blood to stop, willing him to wake up. “Just hold on… Everything is going to be alright… I promise… You just hold on.” Bolting upright in bed, I try to banish the picture of Justin’s head snapping back as the bat connected with his skull. I tried to think of anything besides the blood that flowed out of his body, and pooled onto the cold cement below him. I had followed them to the hospital… wanting to make sure that he was alright, that he would survive. Days, weeks, months, I would call the hospital hoping to get some news on the kid’s condition. I went so far as to go to the asshole’s trial… what a fucking joke. Because the kid was a minor, and the judge was another homophobic asshole, the kid walked away with basically nothing, while Justin lay in that hospital bed, doing therapy, trying to get back to his old self. As time went on I lost contact with the kid… I didn’t know what happened to him. I had tried to find out… going so far as to hire private detectives, but nothing seemed to work. It had seemed like Justin had just disappeared off the face of the earth. So now… years later, I find him again. That fleeting feeling I had when I had first seen him all those years ago was still there, only stronger now. I wonder briefly if this is all some cosmic joke… is this fate playing a game on me? Or was this meant to be? I don’t know, but I want to find out. I need to find out. There is something about Justin that makes me think… makes me look at things differently. He had unknowingly changed my life that night almost three years ago. It was because of what I had witnessed that I was actually able to be a father to Gus. I couldn’t let something like that happen to my son. Justin helped make me who I am today…and he doesn’t even know it. Hell, I didn’t even know it until tonight… at least I didn’t want to admit it. The signs were all there. The small things I would pick up in our conversations, the little things in his bio that I had skimmed over… the signs were all there. I just didn’t want to admit that this beautiful blond young man was the same one I held in my arms willing him to live. * * * * * * * About 3 days later I get the call, telling me to be at this club downtown at 11 p.m. Of course I know that I have to be nice to Blake, because the only way that I will get back with Justin, even if it is just to talk, will be through him. If I piss him off… I can forget it. So I guess it’s play nice with Blake. I just hope that this doesn’t make it back to the boys… my reputation will fucking be shot. But sometimes you have to throw caution to the wind. It’s time to bite the bullet, and admit I was an ass. I know I was. I should’ve been upfront with him to begin with. But Blake told me I had to fix it, and that’s what I plan on doing. As I walk in the club a little before 11, I spot Justin standing at the bar nursing a beer. I walk up to him, and order myself one as well. “Hey,” I say to him. Justin shakes his head and turns to look out over the crowd. “What the fuck are you doing here?” “What, can’t I get a drink anymore?” I grab my beer and turn so that I too am facing out toward the crowd. “Look, Justin…” “Don’t,” he begins, looking me in the eye. “Whatever you have to say, just don’t. I don’t want to hear your shit anymore.” “Listen, just hear me out, okay. Let me explain. Then if you don’t want to see or hear from me again, then fine… I’ll leave you alone. All I ask is that you listen.” Justin looks reluctant to do it, so I try one more time. “It’ll only take a little while, then as I said… if you say the word, I’ll leave you alone.” Justin nods his head and points to the door. I follow him out of the bar, and down the street to a small park. In a way I’m glad that there won’t be a million and one people listening in when I say my peace. I have never been this nervous with anyone before… like what I say will have this much of an impact on my future, and possible future happiness. It scares the shit out of me. But I do know that Justin is like no one else I have ever been with. He is in his own class, and I want to know him… I want to get to know him. Why, I have absolutely no clue. “Okay… so talk,” Justin states as we reach the park. He sits down on a small bench, and looks up at me. Waiting. I know that I have to try and put myself on an equal level with him, if this is ever going to work. So I sit down next to him on the bench and turn to face him. “Damn… I didn’t think that I would get this far.” “You almost didn’t.” And I know that he’s right. But I have to finish this… I have to try. “Okay… I know I was an ass,” I begin. Yeah, great way to fucking start. “You can say that again.” Ouch! That hurt. “And I didn’t mean to lie to you. I just… It’s just that… Fuck!” Dammit Kinney, get your head out of your ass, and just say what you want to say. “At first, yes, I came up to you so that maybe I could get you to do this deal.” Justin only gets a knowing look on his face, and I cringe internally at the knowledge that I had used him at first. “But that was ONLY at first. We stated talking, and things… I don’t know… they changed for me. I didn’t care about that shit anymore. I have never met anyone like you, and I had never had such a ….an adult conversation for that long with anyone before. It was… nice.” “Yeah, it was,” Justin says turning to look out over the park. “And then this past weekend… It was totally amazing. Never in my life had I felt what I felt then. I felt at peace,” I tell him. And as God is my witness, it’s the truth. Justin gave me that feeling. “When you left on Monday… I felt like shit.” Justin smiled slightly, and I wanted to smack the back of his head. Smart-ass. “Well you should have. I don’t like liars, Brian. I don’t like to be used,” he informed me. And I know he’s right. I hate them too… so why did I do it? I’ll never really know. Those words slam into me, making me realize that I have to tell him… I have to let him know. If I don’t tell him that I was there that night, then I may never get the chance again. I may never get the second chance I want with him, the chance to show him that we can possibly make things work. “I know… which is why… I guess…” I try to get the words out, but they are stuck in my throat. For some reason, they have been stuck there for a long time, and now when I need them … they fucking take a hike. “I was there,” is all I can get out. Justin turns to me, eyes wide. “What?” I take a deep breath and turn to look anywhere but him. I can’t do this looking at the man before me… I don’t want to have the two images mesh together, distorting the handsome man before me. “That night… in the parking garage. I was there.” I glance over at Justin and see his whole body tense. “I saw you walking away with your friend, laughing about something. And then out of the corner of my eye, I saw him… waiting. You turned, and he was there. So I cried out to you… but it was too late.” I try to breathe, wanting to block out the images that are crashing to the forefront of my mind. “I ran and pushed him to the ground before he could hit you again… I just held you… telling you that it was going to be alright… that you had to hold on.” “Why,” he asked in a small voice. What a loaded question… one with many possible answers. So I answered the only way I could, I shrugged. “I don’t know. I kept track of you… called the hospital daily… hired a private investigator when you disappeared from town… I thought you were dead. I didn’t realize you were the same person until yesterday.” Justin nodded and closed his eyes. I turn to face him, and take his hand in mine. “I know that I have fucked up… I know that you have every right to tell me to get lost… but I’m asking you for another chance.” “You want a second chance,” Justin asks me. “At what?” “Yes, I do. I want to try and start again… with us,” I tell him. “You think you deserve a second chance… really?” “No… but I would like to.” Justin nodded, and stood up from the bench. “I have to think about it, Brian. You’ve told me so much… I have to think. Give me some time, okay,” he asks me. “Okay. You have my number… Just don’t take too long… please.” “Later,” Justin says as he moves away from me toward the other end of the park. “Later,” I say. I hope beyond hope that my second chance will come. I need to find out what it is that makes him different. What makes me WANT to spend time with him. All I need is a second chance. * * * * * * * TBC…. End of Chapter Three