InsaneJournal

Closed; Julian's Month of Extreme Suck


James was a coward anyway, so it didn't surprise Julian when he received a text at the beginning of February that said, simply:

come home. things are fucked. mom needs you.

It could have been anything. The Kellers had been needing Julian since he was old enough to remember. Their father, William, was so laser-focused on his career that he couldn't be assed to do more than throw money at his family. Their mother, Elizabeth, was as weak and prone to tantrums as a child. And James...

James was getting to be an expert at running away.

We need you could have meant anything, though, so Julian methodically called number after number, growing increasingly worried when housekeepers, maids, handlers, publicists and managers proved impossible to reach. Fuck, even his mother's stylist wasn't picking up the phone. It took eleven calls before one finally went through, and when Julian heard what the latest emergency was, he was out the door in moments with only one hurried mass text to let friends and administrators know he'd be back when he could.

Home was bedlam.

Elizabeth was a wreck. She'd been found curled up in the linen closet, vomit smearing her naked body, eyes glazed and rolled back into her head as she trembled and choked. They hadn't even taken her to the hospital, afraid of the ring of paparazzi slowly growing outside their LA mansion, and when Julian arrived she was still mostly naked, still caked in piss and vomit, still barely hanging on despite the quack doctor jabbing her with needles and shoving tubes down her bruised throat.

Julian shoved the man aside and yelled at James to find a healer. He took control, checking his mother's breathing, clearing out her throat, wrapping her tightly in towels and blankets. He propped her against his body and gave her his heat, slamming the doctor back with a tk fist every time the man tried to press forward again.

Stay with me, mother, come on, you can do this, just stay with me.

The healer was no Josh, but he was competent, and soon the grey clamminess was gone from Elizabeth's face. Once she had been healed of the toxins in her system, Julian lifted her carefully and carried her into the bathroom, turning the taps with his powers as he stripped her down and wiped her off. He bathed her, unembarrassed by his mother's bare, skeletal frame, stonily ignoring James as he hovered uselessly in the doorway.

It had been cocaine--a mountain of it, it seemed, taken in one desperate binge. Over the next few days, Julian focused all of his attention on making sure his mother recovered. The healer had cured the symptoms but not, he argued with James, the root cause. Elizabeth needed help. She needed rehab and therapists and someone with her at all times to make sure this didn't happen again. She needed a change.

Julian thought it was attempted suicide; James was running away from the uncomfortable facts again and called it an accident. They fought, bitterly, slicing at each other with pointed words and accusations, throwing punches when they'd already carved one another to ribbons. When Julian left after two weeks of being the strong one, the reliable one, the adult one, he was raw, trembling inside, and in desperate need of golden hair, a warm smile, and a soft, healing touch.

Instead, he got Josh and Kevin.

The universe hated him.