notreallyme10 (notreallyme10) wrote in qaf_challenges, @ 2009-07-12 19:39:00 |
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Entry tags: | clusterf#ck |
77. Full Length Fic: Fortunate Son
Title: Fortunate Son
Author: wutendeskind
Theme: Complications.
Notes: Brian and Justin’s complications through Jennifer’s POV. My first attempt at first person POV. I played with the timeline a little, as I found it reasonable that Justin may have come to Jennifer about certain things after they had passed. And, most importantly, this story is an obscenely late birthday gift to the ever lovely (cherie_morte), who is always available for cheerleading, handholding, and beta duties.
I was born a fortunate son
Mother gave me all her fear and attention
I worked to prove my worth to everyone.
- Jeremy Toback
I smelled Brian before I met him. I was washing Justin’s clothes from a night at Daphne’s and they didn’t smell right. The shirt didn’t smell at all like my son. It was lacking the familiar blend of Tide, our house, and Justin, the smell I had come to associate with the side of his neck when he would pull me in for an increasingly rare hug. His clothes smelled like stale cigarettes and something dark. Masculine. I added extra detergent, closed the lid on the washing machine, and put it out of my mind.
Justin never smelled quite the same to me again.
When I found the thong in Justin’s room, that white scrap of fabric screaming for attention against his dark jeans, I knew I couldn’t just add extra Tide and hope it disappeared. I also knew it didn’t belong to my son. I was pretty sure Justin, even in his too-small t-shirts, wouldn’t have chosen anything like this for himself. What pants could he possibly be wearing that would necessitate a thong? It was a line of thought I wasn’t sure I’d ever be ready for. Still, I refused to think about what it meant for my only son to come home with another boy’s underwear in his pocket.
It’s important for me to clarify: part of me always knew Justin was gay, though I had convinced myself it would go away if no one ever brought it up. Justin has always been a little effeminate and I could only blame his mannerisms on childhood for so long. It certainly didn’t help his overall image that he had inherited my frame; he was soft, pretty. How could I not know he was gay?
When he was only three or four, much too young to consciously understand the notion of sexuality, I would pull him onto my lap and he’d immediately snuggle in close, working one hand just under the edge of my skirt, my dress, my shirt. Justin would sit there for hours, just rubbing the fabric of my clothing. Later, he and I would sit in the Pittsburgh Museum of Fine Arts together and spend all day mesmerized by the beauty in front of us. Let’s just say that when it all coalesced into a messy, prolonged rendition of the classic “Mom, I want to go to art school and I probably like boys” scenario, I wasn’t entirely shocked.
What I never expected was Brian.
The first time I saw them together, at the Gay and Lesbian Center, was also Justin’s first art show. It was all there, packaged neatly between those four walls: Justin’s understanding of his sexuality, his art, Brian… they were all intimately knotted together, hopelessly fused right from the beginning. Brian was just as dark and dangerously masculine as I had feared. I watched him walk right up to my seventeen-year-old son and kiss him like he belonged there. I was at an art show; my first thought was of the aesthetics. I had to admit they made a gorgeous composition and there was a certain unexpected balance between them.
I think part of me knew then that as long as Justin had his fire, his passion, his art, he would never be rid of Brian, but it wasn’t something I was willing to accept. I ignored his friends’ shock that Brian had come to the show at all, their surprise at his unprecedented interest in Justin, and painted him as an unfeeling lothario, martini and cigar in hand, out to rob young boys everywhere of their innocence.