The End Done Right by Vamphile, Queer As Folk Fanfiction
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The End Done Right
By Vamphile
Takes place after episode 513
Chapter One
Brian was drunk, that wasn’t new, lately Brian was drunk a lot, it felt good, well, not good but better. It had been
three months since he’d said goodbye to Lindsay, and to Gus, and to Justin.
He lay on the mattress, it had been delivered to the house a couple days after the wedding had been scheduled, but
he’d never bothered to have them set up the bed, he’d simply gestured towards a room, he hadn’t even been paying
attention to which room… so now, when he passed out in bed, he was in the room that he had planned to be Gus’s.
The house had too many rooms. “I used to live in one big room that had everything,” he thought now I live in a
hundred rooms with nothing. And nothing was only a slight exaggeration. He had sold a lot of the furniture with the
loft, modern Italian leather wasn’t really the style for a Tudor country manor, and so, when he left the loft, a few
hours after Justin had, he’s taken his clothes, and little else.
The movers came and packed up what he hadn’t sold with the loft and delivered it…
It was all in boxes in the room closest to the front door, he hadn’t bothered to unpack a thing. Sometimes he felt like
he was living in the castle in Citizen Kane, and sometimes, he was too drunk to think about it.
A couple of times a week Mikey stopped by and brought food from the diner, and lemon bars, which was convenient
because then he could throw out the old food from the diner, and the stale lemon bars that were still sitting on the
counter from the last time he’d visited.
Brian worked hard, and then worked out after work, and would sometimes stop by Mikey’s for dinner, but mostly he
just did anything to avoid coming back to the house, the big empty house that he lived in…alone.
He drove by Mel and Lindz’s a few times, but they were gone…they called, and he talked to Gus, who was at a
chatterbox age, and he smiled then as he listened to stories about t-ball and his friend Sam, who it turns out is
imaginary, and then he hangs up the phone and stops smiling.
It wasn’t supposed to be like this.
He stops by Mikey’s tonight, he just can’t go back to the house yet (he just can’t think of it as home either). He’s
already half buzzed from the joint he was smoking in the car when he knocks on the door.
Michael answers, and Brian leans in and kisses him, “hi honey I’m home, what’s for dinner”
“Brian” Michael whines, “You’re stoned”
“Yes, good point, so got any cheetos?”
Michael looks back at Ben apologetically and Ben just shrugs, somewhat understanding how lost Brian is.
Brian collapses on the sofa in an easy sprawl
“So, how bout a drink?” he looks at Michael
“Don’t you think you’ve had enough to drink lately? Christ Brian, you look like hell”
“I look beautiful” Brian rubs his face; “I mean, I think so, Christ, did remember to shave today?” he’s mumbling
now, in that way he has.
“Never mind, I’ll get it myself” he pops up with surprising agility from the sofa and finds a bottle of vodka in the
freezer…
“I can always count on Mikey to have cheap vodka in the freezer, I love you Mikey”
Michael is aggravated, but sad for his friend, who is taking a very long pull straight from the bottle.
He looks at Ben and shrugs “I guess he’s sleeping here tonight” Ben smiles and gives Michael a peck on the cheek,
“I’ll go finish dinner, when he finds out its tofu and beans, he’ll be less interested in eating anyway”
Brian, having heard the conversation takes out his phone and makes a call, he orders two large pizzas to be delivered
to Mikey’s and then settles onto the Sofa, which for all it’s lumpy faults, isn’t in that stupid ass house he hates.
NEW YORK.
Justin hates having roommates, he’d lived with Brian, which was…well, never easy, but had it’s perks, and he and
Daphne had been friends for so long that sharing a place with her was pretty easy, but sleeping on someone else’s
sofa while trying to find a place that wouldn’t cost him more than 600 a month to split was killing him, and there
were already three people living here, four fags, one bathroom, this s not a happy equation.
The guys were interesting enough, but they were young, well, okay they were exactly the same age he was, but they
were just discovering some of the things that Justin was already bored with. They went out every night, coming
home in the early hours of the morning laughing and joking about the men they’d seen, and done.
The tricks they brought home were laughable…well, maybe not, but to Justin there was nothing but Brian and he
was trying to clear his mind of that. He did so by working. He found a studio space. He shared it with two other
artists. One worked with classical techniques, painting Italian frescos on pieces of concrete, the other was a woman
who worked with “found metal” she picked up pieces off the street, welded them together and called it art.
Justin painted, he was working on large canvases, and covering the cost of the studio space, and paint and supplies
was digging deeply into his funds, but he had a couple of meetings with galleries this week, and was hoping to sell
some pieces.
He missed Brian.
Justin shook his head, the idea was to NOT keep thinking that, and each time the phrase “I miss Brian” shot
unwelcome into his head, he doubled his efforts to succeed, to be able to afford a place of his own, with studio
space, a place where he could work, and build a life, and not feel like he’d made a huge mistake.
“I’ve made a huge mistake” he shook his head again, and stood back from the canvas he was working on to take it in
more fully, only he knew what it was.
Most people who had seen it (about half a dozen that had wandered into the studio as friends of his “studio mates”
had called it abstract but intense.
The canvas was huge, brown, almost black, with stripes of hazel, and gold emanating from the center. It was Brian’s
eyes, when the looked at him just before he was about to come…or yell at him, it was that stormy darkness with the
light behind it that only Justin knew, well, Justin and a hundred thousand other men in Pittsburgh but only Justin had
ever had the chance to really study it, most of those men, had never seen that color, they’d been in the dark, in a
back alley, in the baths, they hadn’t seen him in broad daylight, his eyes wide with anger, or fear, or lust, Justin had,
and this is what they looked like, or would look like if they were ten feet tall and 7 feet wide.
The pattern was burned into Justin’s brain, and now, it was coming to life on the canvas.
ONE MONTH LATER
Justin came back from the show very satisfied, he had sold ALL of his pieces. It had been a multiple artist show, he
wasn’t ready for his own show yet, but he made money, good money, enough money to get a place, and…there was
a knock at the studio door.
Brian was in his office. Ted was rambling something about money, and taxes and… he tuned out, and continued to
consider the copy in front of him for a new line of men’s accessories, but nothing was jumping out at him.
“Brian” Ted tried to get his attention.
“Brian!” louder this time.
“What Theodore”
“I um, need you to sign these” Brian signed his name wherever the red arrow told him to. It and Ted started to walk
out of his office…
“WAIT”
Ted stopped dead in his tracks.
“What did I just sign?”
“Nothing major, mortgage insurance, life insurance for Gus, a 10% salary increase for your top level executives.”
“A what? For who?”
Ted had known it couldn’t be that easy, but Brian hadn’t been listening to him. “Brian, you’re impossible”
“Thank you Teddy, I appreciate the input”
“No Brian, listen to me, you’re im-poss-i-ble, you’re driving everyone insane, you work 90-100 hours a week, on a
slow week, you’re here all the time, you’re cranky, and snippy, and if you don’t start shelling out some extra
incentives we’re gonna lose our talent pool”
Brian looked at Ted, and saw the logic to what he was saying
:”Cyn’s getting a raise too?”
“Of course”
“And you Teddy, did you take care of yourself?”
“Brian, I’m one of the top execs, I am included in the package”
“Fine, but give Cyn a 20% raise, and you, well, make it 25%”
“Brian are you sure?”
“Do you want to talk me out of giving you more money Ted? I thought you were a better accountant than that”
Ted smiled “right, not another word, I’ll put the paperwork through”
Brian sat back down in his chair and collapsed his head onto his desk. He vaguely remembered mornings of fresh
clothes in his office after he’s spent the night at Mikey’s he’d never really questioned how they got there. He
considered the mornings he’d woken up on the sofa in his office, to find coffee and juice, or even more amazing, hot
scrambled egg whites from the diner. Cynthia had been putting in more than her share of hours lately he realized,
and Ted had probably been covering his ass in ways he couldn’t imagine when it came to the business.
“Kinney” he said to himself, “it’s time to get your head back into the game”
NEW YORK
Justin answered the door to find Jason Ranston, the owner of the gallery from the show last night.
“Mr. Ranston, come in” Justin was confused as to the man’s appearance here today. They had already made
arrangements for him to pick up his check at the end of the month once the pieces had been delivered.
“All of your work sold Mr. Taylor”
“All of it?”
“You’re the only artist in the show who doesn’t have a piece left”
“Really?” Justin was smiling and he couldn’t help it, it wasn’t about the money, it was about…well, it was a little
about the money.
“Do you think you’re ready for your own show?” he asked
“I’m not sure I have enough pieces yet” Justin answered truthfully, and gestured towards his space in the studio,
which had about a half a dozen finished canvases, the rest were only partially complete, or blank.
“Mr., Taylor, here’s my proposal, I’d usually take you out for coffee, at least to pitch this but I’ll be honest, I’m a
busy man, and there are going to be others knocking on your door today, I wanted to get here first. I need to keep
your name, and your art in the public eye, so I’ll take what’s complete now, and I show them throughout the next
few months, a few pieces at a time, and in nine months, That would be December, we feature you in your own
show”
”That’s very generous Mr. Ranston”
“Bullshit, I’m not being generous, I’m being proprietary, I gave you your first show, and you’re going to be big,
HUGE, and I want the show, I want my gallery to remain the one who discovered you, I want my gallery to be the
one that reaps the profits, shared handsomely with you of course”
“Of course” Justin tried not to smile too wide.
An idea occurred to him, it was an idea he KNEW he should push back into the depths of his brain, and simply
shake the man’s hand, sign the papers and get to work.
“Mr. Ranston? Do I need to paint in New York”?
“Why do you ask?”
“Well, I find I’ve done some of my best stuff in Pittsburgh, so my thinking is, if the idea is to have a spectacular
show in December, I go back to my studio there, and create where I do it best”
Now Justin was just lying, he didn’t have a studio there, but he could get one, and he could be in Pittsburgh, with his
mom, and Molly, and… Brian.
“I need you at the shows Mr. Taylor”
Justin’s heart sank, and then bounced back
“You want your studio to show my work, and you want to reap the benefits of my success, well, you will, and I will
guarantee you three appearances at showings within the next eight months, keeping my name on everyone’s lips, but
not over exposing myself, but in the meantime, I work in Pittsburgh, where I know my discipline is at it’s best, and
my concentration at its most precise”
The studio owner offered his hand and Justin shook it.
“Do you have a lawyer?”
Justin’s heart twinged a little, he used to, he used to have Mel, but now…
“I’ll get one”
“Good, I’ll have the contracts messengered over today”
Justin wanted to call Brian immediately, but he didn’t, they weren’t like that anymore…were they? He was never
sure where he stood with Brian these days, he always seemed so distant on the phone the few times they’d talked.
He called Mel instead, told her the good news and listed while Lindsay gushed and Mel gave him a heat felt attaboy,
then they put Gus on the phone and Justin smiled so widely his mouth hurt as he listed to Gus tell him about Sam
and t-ball, and his baby sister, and then Justin asked him to hand the phone back to momma, and Mel was on the
line.
“The thing is Mel, the studio is sending over the papers, and I don’t have a lawyer, I was wondering if you still knew
anyone in New York or even Pittsburgh whom I could trust.
Melanie thought for a moment, and rattled off a couple of names.
“You’ll come for the show?” he asked
“We wouldn’t miss it kiddo” Mel replied, and Justin got off the phone to make another call.
Two days later he was on a plane, and back in Pittsburgh, his mother picked him up at the airport.
PITTSBURGH
“Justin, you look great sweetie,” his mom said as she greeted him.
He hugged her back genuinely happy to see her.
Neither said anything much while he picked up his luggage and the walked to her car. Once she had cleared the
airport she turned to look at him
“So, where am I taking you?”
Justin shrugged and then gave up the pretence of nonchalance,
“I need to see Brian, so, I guess the loft”
“Honey, he sold the loft”
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