Queer as Folk Fan Fiction:
Season Four Drabbles
by Severina
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Timeframe: Post Season Four Written November 06, 2004
Broken doll baby and she says that love’s a waste
No matter how often Brian buries his head in the pillow, or turns up the music on his walkman, or retreats to the shower and the pounding lull of the spray, he never succeeds in drowning out the verbal sparring of his parents.
Years later, watching Justin pack his things for California, he knows everything he heard was a lie. Love might be frustrating and complicated and irritating, but it sure as fuck wasn’t a waste.
“Come here,” he says, reaching out to catch Justin’s wrist.
He pulls his lover close. He’ll show him... the only way he knows how.
Timeframe: Post Season Four
She never mentions the word ‘addiction’, in certain company
Brian says he wants to see Gus more, and Lindsay is more grateful for that than anyone can ever know.
There are pottery classes and gallery showings and GLC meetings, all of them lacking something that she refuses to name “Mel”. There is even a date, stilted conversation over overcooked steak, before she bails mid-sentence in a stream of understated blue silk. Finally she simply closes and locks the door, and draws her knees up to her chin, and tries to fade into orange stripes and nothingness. But the eyes of Sam’s portrait still seem to follow her around the room.
Timeframe: Episode 405
Baby come home I miss the sound of the door
Brian doesn’t know when he started watching the clock. He only knows that a revolver is slick and heavy in one’s hand, and that there is a darkness behind Justin’s eyes that he can’t reach, and that when he closes his eyes he sees flashing lights and cold grey cement and hears the crackle-hiss of the police radio echoing off the walls. He tosses back another shot and knows that he won’t get drunk. He can’t get drunk.
The squeak of the dented metal door sliding painfully on its track is the most pleasant sound Brian has heard in weeks.
Timeframe: Post Season Four
I drink good coffee every morning
“Pour me a cup,” Justin says as he dashes past Brian.
“Pour your own,” Brian says, not even looking up from his briefcase.
Justin is, as usual, running late. Brian watches with side-glances from beneath lowered lids as Justin dances across the loft, doing seven things at once, and marvels that they’ve even reached this place, prom nights and mayoral elections and trips to California long part of the past.
He pours a second cup of the finest Peruvian blend, just as Justin knows he will. And he wonders when they got so predictable, and why he likes it so much.
Timeframe: Episode 408
I think I’m going for a walk now
When the sound of his angry footsteps echoing on the stairs has faded, I slide into my coat and ease the door open. Set the alarm, pull the door closed, and lean against the metal. The night air will do me good. Just need to rest for a moment.
Something glints on the landing by the elevator, and I find myself bending to retrieve it, turning it over in my fingers. Just a tiny piece of hard plastic.
Like something that might fall from a cracked DVD case.
I curl my fingers around its sharp edges and relish the pain.
Timeframe: Post Season Four
I never thought you were the letter writing type
The first letter arrives written on stationery that probably cost more than a weeks pay at his old diner salary. When he questions Brian, he is told that it is simply “economically prudent” to use up the paper left lying around the loft. The letters stop for a few weeks.
Justin wisely keeps his mouth shut when they resume. He frames the photo of Brian and Gus. And when the unassuming “I love you” shows up at the end of a letter after he’s been in Los Angeles for 5 months, he just smiles. Because he always knew it anyway.
Timeframe: Episode 401
Something in your eyes makes me want to lose myself
“It was love to me,” Justin says.
Brian sometimes wishes for the days when he could slap on a smirk, stick his tongue in his cheek, come back with something snarky and condescending and not care if it smacked away the earnest look on Justin’s face. Because then he could still deny that clutch in his chest, and that twist in his gut, and that fear that is both exhilarating and frightening as hell. It’s much harder to be a man than a God.
Now, all he can do is kiss him. And think, “it was love for me, too.”
Timeframe: Mid Season Four
You know you’re gonna lie to you in your own way
The first time the doctor says “cancer”, Brian sees Vic. Not the taunting spectre who will come to haunt his nausea-filled nightmares, but Vic as he was, five years ago, when they thought that the AIDS that ravaged his body was going to win. Vic, with wrists slim as matchsticks and thin lips pulled back from sunken gums. The doctor says “radiation” and Brian sees Vic, propped on the edge of the bathtub, shaking, as thick clumps of his hair wash down the drain.
Brian decides that he will share the word, “cancer”, with no one. He can fight alone.
Timeframe: Post Season Four
I wanted to stay, I wanted to play, I wanted to love you
Justin spends his first two weeks in California in a state of bliss. He sightsees. He meets movie stars and goes surfing (and almost drowns). He drinks exotic cocktails at exclusive parties. He feels special.
Justin spends his remaining twenty-two weeks in California working with almost impossible deadlines and then dropping exhausted into his (empty) bed. Movie stars are pretentious and boring, and the only surfing he does is in chat rooms with Brian. He becomes addicted to Cherry Coke.
And he realizes that he always felt special back home.
His path leads him back to Pittsburgh, where he belongs.
Timeframe: Post Season Four
Spend all your time waiting for that second chance
Michael believes everything Brett tells them: about maintaining the emotional integrity of the script, about standing up to homophobic Hollywood, about the creation of a queer hero for all ages. He happily signs on the dotted line. Brett breaks every promise, of course. And the purified, practically hetero-fied movie tanks. Of course.
Justin moves on, because Rage was merely a distraction, a plaything. To Michael, Rage is real. He tries to believe in Ben’s reassurances; in his heart he knows that he only had this one shot, just like Ben only had ‘RU12’. Failure hurts, but sometimes hope hurts more.
Timeframe: Episode 401
I was born to run, I was born to dream
Sometimes, with Brian, it’s all about timing. I’ve learned how to find my openings.
Then I start thinking that there will never be the perfect time to say what I want to say. What I need to say. More than that, he needs to hear it. With the future uncertain, without a job, maybe without a home -- fuck, there’s no way I’m letting him sell the loft -- he needs to hear it more than ever.
“It was love to me,” I tell him.
His look and his touch tell me he feels the same. It’s all I need.
Timeframe: Post Season Four
It was a big day on Jesus Ranch
“It’s owned by some kind of religious cult ,” Justin hissed into the phone. “They have no idea we’re here scouting for the biggest homo movie of all fucking time.”
“Hmm,” Brian murmured. Justin heard the rustle of papers and the distinctive beep of the fax machine. Brian at his multi-tasking best. He figured he should be grateful Brian wasn’t getting a blow job at the same time.
“There’s ostriches. And emus.” Justin shifted the cell and wrinkled his nose. “It smells like--”
“Let me guess,” Brian drawled. “Emu shit?”
“This llama keeps eyeing my ass!”
“Welcome to Hollywood, Sunshine.”
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Feedback
is always welcome
Severina
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