InsaneJournal

Guilt Trip
Title: Guilt Trip
Author: dirtylttlescret
Beta: tweedygal, who allowed me to spam her inbox while trying to fix the first draft of this. Also thanks to xie_xie_xie for pointers on writing h/c fic.
A/N: For silentlywrecked, who took the time to help me beautify my IJ and format it correctly when I am html-tarded. She wanted some protective!daddy!Brian, so here's a 5,000 word post-513 fic as a thank you.

...

Brian’s first mistake is telling a second grader where Anaheim is.

“But I thought-” he pauses, his seven-year-old brain trying to spin the pieces into place, “-I thought I was going to get to come and stay at your house on Sunday. Mommy wrote it on the calendar and I circled it with a big red marker so I could remember.”

Brian tries to ignore the twinge of guilt he feels about canceling Gus’s visit for the second time in two months, then brushes it off as the bad Vietnamese food he ate from that new place around the corner.

Lindsay takes the phone back from her son. “Brian, it’s his spring break. He’s been looking forward to this for weeks,” she says sharply. “So don’t give me any of this ‘It’s business,’ bullshit. If you tell him he can come and visit, then don’t fucking run away when he actually does.”

Brian paces around the kitchen, slamming the refrigerator door so hard, an empty stainless steel coffee mug falls off the top and hits him in the foot. "Shit," he says, kicking it across the hardwood floor into the dining room. “Lindsay, if I don’t go and do this, I’m going to lose the Calypso Furnishings account.” He ignores the pain in his foot and tries not to think about the conversation they’d had just yesterday, what it would mean if this deal actually went through.

“I don’t care if it’s Anaheim or Miami or Fairbanks, Alaska. If I have to listen to Gus sob all week about how you reneged on your promise to take him for a visit, and not being able to go to Disneyland, I won’t need Melanie to cut off your balls for me, I’ll do it myself.”



“If I don’t get this account,” Brian tells Justin an hour later, “the New York office isn’t going to happen.”

“I know,” says Justin.

“It’s not like there’s some other $75 million dollar account out there flying around, just waiting to fall out of the sky. I practically fucking killed myself over the last six months chasing after them to get it. This is it.”

“So take him Brian. Why does it always have to be one thing or the other? Why can’t it be both?”

He starts to open his mouth to explain, but it’s pointless. Because if he tells him the real reason why, Justin will just act all understanding and encourage him to do the right thing, and Brian can’t hear that from him right now. He needs him to be cold and selfish and not give a flying fuck about other people.

So Brian makes the call, and within thirty minutes, Gus’s flight has a second leg tacked onto it - a first class seat next to his Dada from the Pitts to L.A..

Two days later, Justin calls Cynthia in the middle of the day and asks for Brian’s flight information. He calls back three minutes later.

“Fuck. I told her not to tell you,” says Justin caught red-handed.

“Nice try blond boy. Cynthia’s loyalty lies to me and her paycheck alone. Want to tell me how your one and only client living in the greater Los Angeles area just happened to call and ask for a meeting this Monday?”

“He wanted to commission a painting,” he says, his voice only faltering the teeniest bit.

“Uh huh.”

“Um, the last one he bought netted me $18,500?” Justin tries again.

“Try again.”

“I want to see you cringe when Winnie the Pooh tries to give you a hug?”

Brian folds his lips in between his teeth and bites down in a grimace. He wonders if it’s too late to plan for Kinnetik Miami. He can drink doubles on the beach and watch men in white linen pants glistening with coconut oil while the rest of them can all go fuck themselves.

“Christ, I’ll need four tabs of E just to make it through the day.”

“Maybe it won’t be so bad. Have you even been to Disneyland before?”

“No, but I also don’t need to go to Provo, Utah to know that it’s got the highest percentage of sexually frustrated bottoms in the continental United States.”

Justin simpers and counts to five in his head, waiting for Brian to cave.

“Fine,” he says after a moment. “You can come, but you have to give me head in at least two inappropriate places, and if Gus wants to go on any rides that involve singing children, you have to take him.”

“Brian, it’s Disneyland. The entire park is inappropriate,” he says, leaving it unspoken that if Gus pouts his lip and swings his foot just so, Brian will be humming along with the animatronic Eskimos along with the rest of them. “See you Sunday afternoon dear,” he says, laying it on thick. Brian slams his cell phone shut in disgust.

…

Justin lands first and instead of heading through security to grab his bag, he hides behind a display of TV monitors at their gate and waits for their flight to land. He sees them walking out behind three platinum blond women, Brian barking into his phone at Ted, while Gus bounces up and down as he bounds out in front. Gus stops and grins a smile that’s two sizes too big for his face when he catches him hiding behind the monitors, but follows his lead when Justin holds a finger up to his lips and winks knowingly.

They keep it a secret for nearly two whole seconds before Justin finds himself wrapped in Brian’s strong arms. He closes his eyes and relaxes a little as a hot tongue works it’s way into his mouth.

“Ew,” says Gus. “Daddy, don’t kiss Justin. That’s gross.”

Justin smiles and sticks out his tongue. “What if I want to be kissed, huh?” he says, closing his mouth over Brian’s yet again. “Mm, yummy.”

They make their way over to the baggage claim, Gus running around the conveyor belt in wide arcs, rolling his little multicolored carry-on behind him that Justin’s sure Debbie had something to do with. Brian nudges him with his hip, their fingers twining as they revel in the simple feeling of palm against palm, a gesture they don’t take for granted anymore. Gus’s babbling washes over them like a soft blanket and Brian takes a moment to lean in and nuzzle his neck.

“I missed you.”

“You saw me two weeks ago,” says Justin, but he’s smiling.

“Mm, not enough,” says Brian, rubbing his nose against Justin’s as he turns to breathe him in. They kiss softly.

“Come on Dad,” says Gus, pointing at their bags which are now circling away from them on the moving belt. “We hafta get our luggage so we can go swimming in the pool at the hotel. Hey Justin, did you know we saw Disneyland from the plane?” he says all in one breath.

“I’m not going to be able to blow you in the park with him following us around all the time,” Justin whispers into his ear.

“I know,” grins Brian, “but I’m counting on you to distract him long enough for me to fuck Tarzan.”

…

Early Monday morning, Justin drops Brian off at Calypso Furnishings and takes Gus to the beach. It’s warmer in Long Beach than it is in New York, but still too cold for swimming, so they roll their pants up and walk in the foam as it laves up around their ankles.

“I’m too short. I need Daddy here so I can sit on his shoulders and see it,” says Gus, squinting out over the water.

“See what?”

“The Great Wall of China. Momma told me it was on the other side of the Specific.”

Something about his sincerity makes Justin laugh until his stomach hurts, and when he’s done wiping the tears from his eyes, he clues Gus in to some of the basic concepts of geography. They chase seagulls, make castles in the sand until their fingernails are caked in grit, and count the different number of tracks they can find on the beach.

They pick up a pizza on the way back to the hotel and supplement it with some of the lemon bars Debbie packed for Brian to take on the flight, then color until Gus yawns for the thousandth time in twenty minutes and finally crawls into bed to take a nap. He’s asleep with a belly full of greasy pizza when Brian shows up an hour later, throwing the door open to the hotel suite with the sort of flourish he only reserves for big occasions. He’s got a bottle of Dom in one hand and a shit-eating grin plastered across his face.

“Hi honey,” Justin says egging him on. “How was your day?”

“Say hello to Kinnetik New York.” Brian closes the distance between them in half a second and covers Justin’s mouth with a relatively chaste kiss. “Where’s my son? I want to celebrate.”

“Sleeping in the other bedroom. I think the time change finally caught up with him,” he says, reaching around Brian’s waist to pull him closer for a kiss more worthy of the moment. When they break, Justin’s eyes are blue and full of pride. “By the way, why didn’t you tell me Gus had never been to the ocean before?”

Brian blinks surprised. “I didn’t know. Lindsay said Gus loves the beach. I thought she meant the Jersey Shore or something, not Lake fucking Ontario.”

“Brian, when you were in school, did they give you the circle paper so you wouldn’t hurt yourself on the sharp corners?” Justin teases.

“Just for that you little shit, I’m not going to let you come when I fuck you into the mattress,” he says as he slips his hand under the elastic waistband of Justin’s sweats, palming a handful of cock. “I’m just going to abuse your ass for my own personal gratification, then leave you panting and hard with no hope for release.”

Justin’s mouth is open a little now, arousal shading his eyes almost navy with lust. He swallows hard and shoves it down. “Can’t. Have to meet Kirk Halverstein in an hour and it’s going to take me that long to get up to L.A. with the traffic.”

Brian’s only response is to stroke Justin harder, teasing his soft cock into an erection. “Then we’ll just have to be quick about it, won’t we,” he says smirking.

Justin is thirty minutes late for his meeting, and blames it on a flat tire.

…

They eat dinner together at a posh Italian restaurant that’s suspiciously free of other children, but Gus sits quietly with his coloring book and is fairly well behaved.

“Don’t you think a diner or something might have been more appropriate?” Justin asks, fingering the sleek black line of the table.

“If I want my kid to grow up cultured, I have to start somewhere. Isn’t that right sonny boy?”

“What?” he mumbles through a mouth of squash ravioli as he scribbles away.

“Christ, I bet Lindsay’s got him eating pop tarts for breakfast.”

“Daddy, you shouldn’t swear. Mommy said it’s nasty habit.”

“And what does Mommy say when Grandma Deb swears?”

“She says Grandma Deb can do whatever she wants because she’s the boss of everyone,” says Gus, his brow furrowed seriously as he takes another not-so-dainty bite of his pasta.

Justin purses his lips and raises his eyebrows. “Kid’s got a point. Although she’s not the only person I know who thinks they’re the boss of everyone,” he says, taking a bite of his seafood risotto and making a point to stare candidly at the brunet across the table.

Brian is strangely silent instead of biting back like he normally does. Instead he digs into his plate of braised lamb and roasted asparagus and picks up Gus’s napkin when it slips off onto the floor.

Back at the hotel, Brian lets Gus tell him a story as he puts him to bed. Justin changes into his pajama bottoms and brushes his teeth while he pretends not to be listening from the other room. He can tell that Brian tries harder these days to say those words that mean so much to him, but intimacy doesn’t come naturally to him, and he’ll never be as open with his emotions as Michael or Lindsay or Emmett. But what Justin knows now that he didn’t so many years ago, is that it only makes these rare moments that much more special. They’re like a rock that skips five times across the water instead of two, or double rainbow that stretches from one side of the sky to the other after a humid summer storm.

When they’re finally sure that he’s out for the night, they shut the door between the rooms and climb into bed naked. They make love with a sort of quiet reverence, licking and caressing tender patches of skin, finding their way back to each other in ragged breaths and purposed thrusts. Though Brian would never admit that that’s what this is. It’s not making love, it’s just slow fucking with more kissing.

As the moon pours in through a crack in the curtains, Justin comes with a silent shudder, clutching at Brian’s back as his come gushes warm between them. Brian fills the condom a second later, every muscle in his body clenching tight as he rides out the wave of his orgasm, then collapses on top of Justin’s sweaty chest. His limp torso is heavy, but the weight is comforting and Justin doesn’t have it in him to move right now.

More than anything, it’s this that he misses most in those long weeks away from each other: Brian’s weight. He misses feeling it on top of him after he’s just come after a long and hard fuck, feeling it press into the mattress as Brian crawls into bed after shit-awful day at Kinnetik, feeling his arm hang across his shoulders for all to see as they walk down Liberty Avenue.

Reminding him that two years is a long time.

Brian pulls out and tosses the condom at the trashcan, pulling Justin close to him as he threads his fingers through his hair with one hand and reaches for the obligatory post-coital cigarette with the other.

“You should really give up smoking,” says Justin, crinkling up his nose at the smoke. “It’s bad for your health, especially considering, you know…” he says as he brushes his fingers against Brian’s sac.

Brian takes another drag off of his cigarette and ignores him. “Thank you Surgeon General. Didn’t I see you chain smoking a pack of Marlboros two months ago at your last gallery opening?”

“That was different. I was nervous.”

“And I’m blissed out of my fucking mind from having my dick up the ass of an annoying little twat, so let me enjoy my nicotine high in peace and mellow in the afterglow already, will you?”

Justin tries not to look too smug when he swats him back.

…

The only thing making Tuesday morning even remotely bearable is Gus’s enthusiasm, because so far, just thinking about spending an entire day in the gayest place on earth is enough to make Brian’s dick go soft. He’s nursing the biggest headache he’s had since he lost the Remson Pharmaceuticals account two year ago when he told them to go fuck themselves, and Justin looks like he’s about to be lead to the gallows.

“Well, well lookie here,” says Brian, nudging him in the side as he pokes about at his cheerios dejectedly. “I thought you’d be chomping at the bit to get your picture taken with Cinderella and her seven dwarves.”

“That’s Snow White,” he corrects as he tosses the contents of his bowl into the trash, wondering why he didn't think this one through a little better.

They get to the park by ten and breathe a sigh of relief to find that that the crowds are slim by Disneyland’s standards. It’s a small consolation in a day that’s sure to be filled with candy-colored horrors. A ridiculously hot ticket taker scans their passes as they enter the park and Justin has to push Brian through before he can yank him away from his turnstile to suck him off in the nearest restroom.

“Good grief Brian, at least wait until after we go on some of the rides,” says Justin, trying to get him to focus. He tries to sneer back, but the excitement radiating off of Gus’s skin is strangely infectious, and he can’t help but crack a grin when he grabs his hand and starts yanking him down the street. He’s talking a mile a minute, taking in the faux Victorian architecture of Main Street and the candy displays in the windows, watching the shiny trolley as it rolls slowly by on it’s endless loop to the center park and back.

Brian makes the mistake of letting go of his hand for Justin’s.

One moment Gus is deeply engrossed in a window display of Aladdin, the next he’s gone, off like a rocket towards Tigger at the end of the street, chasing after a fuzzy orange profile framed by a giant castle with cobalt-colored spires behind.

He hits the curb with surprising speed, and before his brain can fully process what’s happening, Justin has a strange moment where he imagines Gus as a dragonfly stuck on a pin, his gangly limbs gracefully suspended in the air as he comes down hard in slow motion.

His right arm connects with the pavement first, the rest of his body a half step behind, smacking into the cobblestone in twelve different directions all at once. Brian’s legs are already in motion by the time his chin hits the sidewalk, the ten paces between them ten too many.

Gus doesn’t cry at first, which unnerves Brian more than if he was screaming at the top of his lungs.

A park employee selling churros from a red wheeled cart drops her tongs, scattering cinnamon sugar across the sidewalk as she rushes over to help them. She calls for help from the phone hidden on the side of the penny arcade, then pulls off her jacket and bundles it to make a pillow for his head.

Gus doesn’t move except but to make small shuddering sobs, his wrist bent at a strange angle, his jeans torn through the knees and bleeding like his chin. There are hot tears streaming down his face, and Brian can only recall watching one other person cry like that in his life: Melanie as she hiccupped snotty tears over their nearly aborted wedding.

Only he can’t fix this one with tulle and stargazer lilies.

“Daddy?” says a tinny voice.

“It’s okay Gus, I’m here,” says Brian, careful not to jostle his arm. The girl from the churro cart is hovering nearby and Brian has to restrain himself not to scream at her for not calling the EMTs fast enough, for being disgustingly calm and patient when he feels like he’s about to tear into a thousand pieces. Justin can feel the chaos crawling under his skin, and he puts his hand on Brian’s tense back to ground him while he whispers words of comfort into his son’s ear.

Gus bites his lip and locks eyes with his dad, and for a moment, Brian can’t help but wonder how he ended up with such strikingly blue eyes, since both he and Lindsay have dark ones. They’re stunning and beautiful in a way that Justin’s will never be, if only because they came from him, from his body. They’re bright and innocent and filled with a kind of unabashed wonder that Brian has long since buried down with his own hate filled childhood.

The park’s EMT’s arrive a few minutes later and he starts yelling at them the second they hop out of the van.

“He’s in pain, can’t you see that? Goddamnit, can’t you give him something already? What the fuck is wrong with you?”

Gus is crying louder now, and Justin pulls on Brian’s arm and forces him to look into his eyes. “Brian, you need to calm down. It’s just a broken arm. You’re freaking him out.”

He knows that Justin is right, but that doesn’t stop him from wanting to punch both of these incompetent assholes right in the face for moving with all the speed of banana slugs. Brian manages to pull it together long enough to allow them to splint Gus’s arm and clean up his knees and chin in peace, then climbs into the back of the ambulance as they load him up. He doesn’t kiss Justin goodbye.

After the ambulance pulls away silently, Justin runs out to the parking lot and programs the name of the hospital that the EMTs gave him into the navigational system in the rental car. It takes all of five minutes to get to the medical center, a few more to find a parking space, and then another to walk across the lot to the ER. He can’t imagine what sort of state Brian’s in.

He finds Gus sitting in a hard plastic seat near the admissions desk of the ER, his right arm elevated on a large folded pillow with a cold compress on it. He slides into the seat next to him and watches Brian yelling at a petite black woman behind the desk who looks like she’s seen it all. She quietly passes Brian a clipboard to fill out, then calmly explains what the EMTs have already informed him when he came in - there’s a trauma in the first two ER rooms and when they finish, they’ll get to his son.

He yanks the clipboard out of her hands, then storms over to sit next to Gus.

“It’s okay Daddy,” says Gus, petting his bicep with his left hand. “Jarred gave me an ice pack in the ambulance, so it’s okay now, see?” he raises his broken wrist to show him, which he seems to have forgotten he’s not supposed to do. He winces in pain and Brian grits his teeth so hard, Justin swears he can hear it.

They sit mostly in silence, Brian’s eyes dark and dangerous, practically daring any doctor or nurse who emerges from the ER to take a cigarette break in the ambulance bay or to get a fresh breath of air to double cross him. Justin’s surprised he hasn’t ripped the pen through the page with how violently he’s scribbling across it.

Finally, after two hours of sitting in the uncomfortable molded orange seats and everyone’s patience wearing thin, a redheaded woman in rainbow colored scrubs (who looks an awful lot like Debbie’s long lost baby sister) shows up with a wheelchair and escorts them to an empty bed. An elderly doctor in a lab coat joins them a few minutes later and does an artful job of distracting Gus while they X-ray his arm in radiology and set his bone.

Another two hours later and Gus is happily drugged, his arm wrapped in a bright teal Gortex waterproof cast as they wheel him out of the hospital. Brian is silent and sullen, and when he slides into the driver’s seat of the rental car, Justin doesn’t say a word. It’s four o’clock by the time they get back to the hotel suite, and Gus crawls into his bed in the other room and falls asleep, the drugs making him tired and groggy. They shut the door between them and Brian tosses the white prescription bag they picked up at the drugstore onto the bed, along with the metallic silver pen they bought to sign his cast with.

“At least you didn’t have to spend the entire day in Disneyland,” Justin offers, even though he knows it’s the wrong thing to say.

Brian rummages through his suitcase for something, shrugging off his touch when he tries to approach him.

“I’m going to work out,” says Brian, anger edging his voice. “You can do what you want.” He grabs his workout clothes from his bag and slams the door behind him as he leaves.

Justin ignores Brian’s dramatic exit and pulls out his sketchbook to try and come up with something inspirational for the Halverstein commission. After a while, his pencil still poised above a blank page, he gives up and moves to check on Gus. He finds him napping peacefully, Gus’s soft brown hair falling across his eyes, a little puddle of drool collecting under his cheek as he cradles his new teal cast protectively underneath his scraped chin.

He hasn’t drawn Gus in a long time. He flips open his sketchbook to a new page and he pulls up a chair as he starts a rough outline. Justin presses the charcoal to the paper, watching the soft rise and fall of Gus’s chest as sleeps. It’s obvious that he looks a lot like Brian, yet the older he gets, he’s constantly surprised at how much of Lindsay’s blood is in him. He sees it in his pale skin, his honest eyes, in his open sweetness that Brian’s never had the courage to expose to others. He’s amazed at how there are almost as many differences between the two of them as there are similarities.

When he’s done, he places a piece of tissue paper between the pages to keep it from smudging and goes back into the other room to watch some television. He closes the door behind him and keeps the volume on low as he flips through the channels.

A knock on the door nearly startles him, and he’s somewhat surprised to see Brian standing alone in the hallway, his face flushed red, body dripping in sweat.

“I forgot my key,” he says softly. The words are honest and apologetic. He enters the hotel suite with shoulders bowed, his posture betraying a moment of sincere vulnerability.

“Feel better?” Justin asks, wiping him down with a clean white towel.

“I ran nine miles in sixty minutes,” he says, grabbing a bottle of water from the honor bar and drinking half of it in one gulp. “Why do I care so much?” he asks, sitting on the bed.

“Because you love him,” says Justin, moving to stand between his knees.

Brian stares out the window behind them, his body suddenly stiff despite the fact that he’s physically exhausted. He avoids Justin’s gaze. Neither of them speaks for a moment.

“The Munchers are moving back,” he says finally with a sort of halfhearted chuckle.

“Since when?” Justin asks in shock.

“Since January apparently,” says Brian. “Lindsay told me last week.”

The day’s events suddenly seem a whole lot more meaningful.

“Why didn’t you tell her?”

“What? That I was moving to New York? Even Michael doesn’t know about it yet. Only Cynthia and Ted are in on the plans for the new branch. I figured the less drama involved the better.”

“Yeah, but she was eventually going to need to know.”

“Well now she does,” he says, getting up and crossing over to look at the balcony.

Justin pauses, trying to come up with the right words to say. He leans against Brian’s back and breathes in his sweaty smell though the black wife beater, feeling him solid and warm against his own body.

“You have to stay,” he says, stating the obvious.

“I know,” says Brian.

Justin presses his head firmly against Brian’s shoulder and listens to him breathe, the weight of his body grounding him as he makes a decision. It’s a decision he’s made twenty times over since the last time Brian came to New York. One that’s been a long time in coming.

“I want to come home,” he says with sure words and an even tone. Brian looks at him in surprise, almost challenging him to take the words back.

“I thought you wanted me to come to New York.”

“I wanted to be with you,” says Justin. “In New York, in Pittsburgh, wherever - I don’t care where. I just want to be with you.”

“It does matter,” says Brian, turning to stare at him as he grabs him at his sides, his strong fingers pressing into Justin’s biceps in a warning. “You have to be in New York. I’m not going to let you sacrifice your career and your passion to come play happy homo in the Pitts.”

“I wouldn’t be sacrificing anything,” says Justin defensively. “Yeah, I’d miss it, but New York’s served it’s purpose. It’s a piece of me now, embedded in me just as strongly as L.A. or the bashing or us. But if I stay there any longer, I’ll stagnate. It’s time to move on.”

“Justin, you can’t just decide something like this because I can’t come to New York anymore. It’s your home. I won’t let you leave it.”

“It’s not a whim. I made the decision weeks ago,” he says firmly. “And it’s not my home. You are.”

Brian opens his mouth as if to argue back, trying to assert his dominance and make the decision for him, but Justin stops it with a kiss.

“I’m coming home Brian, so fucking shut up about it already.”

“Good grief, you’re a bigger drama queen than I am,” laughs Brian as they fall onto the bed. Clothes are gone in an instant, and Justin smiles, savoring the taste of his salty skin under his tongue as his licks his way across his chest.

“Drama princess,” he corrects, and they manage to sneak in a quick fuck before Gus knocks at the door a half an hour later.

…

The next morning, Brian sits sandwiched between Justin and Gus in a boat, grimacing as a robotic Johnny Depp warns them of the dangers that lie ahead. Gus beams at his Dada when they pass by piles of stolen treasure and the bleached bones of fake skeletons, the silver signatures of cartoon rodents and violently colored stuffed animals glinting off his cast in the dim light. Brian genuinely smiles back.

“Now when the scary pirate says dead men tell no tales," he says lowering his voice and whispering directly into Gus’s ear so that he giggles at the sound, “that’s when you help Daddy push Justin overboard.”

“Hey!”

It’s still fucking hell, Brian thinks, but the host is pretty damn adorable.