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basements. Author's Note: Thanks for all your reviews on the
prologue. This chapter doesn't have any B/J interaction yet, just a
little more backstory, but still, it's important to the rest. 
“The colors in this piece are absolutely fantastic.” She says, tapping her pencil against the frame of his canvas as she walks by. He glances up at her, over his paintbrush, not yet smiling because he hasn’t heard the rest yet. “Bold, vibrant. Yet somehow, dismal.” “Dismal in a shitty way?” He asks. Immediately she laughs and shakes her head, light brown hair slipping from where she’d no doubt earlier tucked it away behind her ears. He tries to remember the movement for later, for another one of the pieces that he’s been working on for weeks. “Have you named this particular piece yet?” Her hand smoothes over the dried paint at the base of the well worked on canvas, and he shrugs his shoulders right away, then takes a step backwards. He almost bumps into the girl working on a separate canvas behind him, but he doesn’t notice the way she jumps and reaches for her paints before they spill over the easel. “Haven’t really thought about it yet.” He admits, and the teacher laughs again, that light and airy sound moving around the room and in front of his artwork. He can almost see it. “Why?” “No reason.” She says, and her small hands move to brush the imaginary lint from her shoulders. “Just something to think about.” “I guess so. None of my pieces have real names, though.” A non-committal shrug of his shoulders and one of the delicate corners of her mouth curls up into a grin, all wicked lips and defined cheekbones. “Why, you want to name it for me?” Her well trained eyes trail down the painting, taking in each streak of dark blood red paint, and each individual black splatter and dot. “Teenage angst.” She says, and Justin really would be mad if he wasn’t so fucking embarrassed. The teacher weaves her way back around another two canvases, making a half assed comment to one of the students who enrolled in the art program thanks to daddy’s bank account, just because she wanted to be a fashion designer or some shit like that. Whatever the reasoning behind that is, Justin figures. But he’s too busy trying to pack his supplies up to bother being any more cynical than normal. He barely looks the teacher in the eye as he slips out the door, hopefully unnoticed and in-between a natural artist and another student who’s practiced for years. “They were a lot better before they signed to the major label of who’s name I will not mention.” He smirks, and reaches down to pull a plastic bag out from under the front counter. “But it’s still decent, man.” “Yeah?” The customer asks, clarifying and nodding as his purchase is handed over the counter. The employee shrugs his shoulders and pulls the receipt out of the counter, then throws that in the bag before aforementioned customer with red hair that’s three inches too damn long can leave the store without it, only to return at a later date and complain. “Yeah, it disappointed. But not anymore than usual.” The customer laughs and waves over his shoulder as he leaves the much loved record store, and the bell above the entrance rings as the door closes behind him. Just as the employee is digging around under the counter for another package of the plastic bags, a blonde bounces into the store, her crimped hair slightly frizzy on the ends as she makes an immediate beeline toward the checkout counter. “Hi.” She says, pressing both of her palms flat against the battered counter. Her acrylic nails threaten to break from her fingers as pressure makes her knuckles turn white and she asks, “What’s your name?” “That depends on who’s asking.” He says, smirking as he wipes his hands off on his pants and hopes that the plastic stink from the bags isn’t as bad as usual. The blonde rolls her makeup slicked eyes and makes a scoffing noise, like, duh, it’s totally her that wants to know. So he puts on his best customer service voice and forces his favorite grin. “Hi. I’m Brian. How may I help you this glorious morning?” “Okay, like. Brian? I have a problem.” She starts, after looking slightly put off at the word glorious. Her hands finally ease up on the counter, but her plucked eyebrows crawl way up into her hairline and all that Brian can think is fuck, do you ever. “Okay, so. Here’s the thing. I had this boyfriend, right? And he’s like, such an asshole, but my best friend – or, okay, like… ex-best friend, she totally thinks he’s the greatest guy ever, which I thought too at first, but he’s totally not-“ “Duh.” He throws in, fully intrigued with the situation as he leans against the counter with his elbows, and she breaks out into a well manufactured grin, then claps in approval. “I know, right! Do you know him or something? Eric… D… Du… I can’t remember his stupid French last name, doesn’t matter. Because he’s an asshole.” She explains. Brian nods sagely and bets that he’s probably Spanish, not French. “Anyways, I totally need some good music for someone who’s just had their best friend and boyfriend hook up like, totally behind their back. At least that’s what Elizabeth told me.” She looks vacant for a split second, then snaps back to reality. “So. Any recommendations?” Brian laughs and slides off his stool, moving around the side of the counter so he can slink his arm around her shoulders and guide her towards the section of the store that he hates the absolute fucking most. Perfect for your pity party, though. He thinks, while she tries to hit on him. Fucking ideal. “I can’t fucking believe this.” He hisses, and his voice is strained thanks to the bordering on out of shape state that his body is in as he runs up the fifth flight of stairs. “Fucking asshole out of order elevator, shit. Fuck.” The swearing only makes him feel a little bit better, but when he pinches the tip of his middle finger in the door to his dorm room, the trivial irritation turns into utter fury, and he stomps over to his bed and then throws his belongings down, digging around in the collection of garbage on his desk for the set of textbooks that he paid three hundred bucks a piece for. His cellphone rings just as he’s hurrying back out the door and trying to remember to lock it behind him, and he answers with a snapped, “What?”, and he doesn’t even laugh like he usually does when the Mexican Hat Dance ringtone starts to play. “Justin?... That you?” The voice asks, and Justin sighs softly but still slams the door closed behind him, saying a silent fuck you to whoever might still be sleeping at two thirty in the afternoon. Fuck them, He thinks. Fuck them because that’s what I wish I was doing right now. “Yeah, it’s me. I thought you had a class right now.” He starts back down the five flights of stairs, and tries his best not to trip over heavy October boots. “Something’s wrong?” “Nothing’s wrong.” Justin’s caller says, and Justin’s starting to climb up that steep slope to getting pissed off at the mundane way that his day’s been going so far. Except replace ‘mundane’ with ‘for shit.’ “I was going to leave you a voicemail, but I guess now I don’t have to. You busy for dinner tonight?” Justin starts down the stairs that connect levels three and four and laughs, slightly breathless but mostly just happy that his day is finally starting to look up. “For you, Liam?” He asks, and he doesn’t even curse when he drops his most expensive textbook and it bounces down five or six steps. “Never.” “Hey. You busy tonight?” She asks, and she’s smiling with pink glossed lips as she walks up to him and throws her auburn hair over a slender shoulder. He glances up from where he’s looking over a script that the professor passed onto him – something about being a complete natural and having been actually born to act, but Brian knew that already – and smirks up at the young woman who he knows can’t act to save her already ordinary life. “Actually, I-“ He starts, but before a follow-up word can come out and have him at least halfway to making a sentence, a thin and pale arm wraps around his shoulders and he’s jerked out of his well practiced speech before it can even begin. “He can’t, love. He has to go home. And practice being gay. He’s a homo, you know. Like. A fag. I mean… He’s interested in drama isn’t he?” The voice says, and Brian has to bite the insides of his lips to keep from laughing out loud as he tries his best to bow out of the tight grip that’s encompassed his shoulders. He can’t even look up at the poor girl without the fear of splitting his stomach open from laughing so god damned hard. “Tell her how gay you are, Bri.” His eyes aren’t apologetic but he knows he should at least pretend to be a little bit as he clarifies with, “Pretty fucking gay.” “So gay that he wouldn’t even fuck Carmen Electra. Would you?” Brian can’t answer the earlier asked question because he’s too busy laughing and watching her hurry away, throwing some lame excuse over her shoulder as to how she’s um, actually, uh, busy tonight, after all. “When are you going to stop salting my game, man?” Brian asks, glancing up and grinning. His friend laughs and slaps him on the back with a flattened palm, then puts his jacket on, first his right arm and then his left. “I almost fucking had her.” “I wanted to discuss this paper with you.” He says, carefully edging around his professor’s desk as he tries to make sure that his voice doesn’t shake, but it’s actually a little harder than he thought it’d be. His Lit teacher – the teacher who Justin knows completely fucking hates every pale none in his self-reviewed-stunningly-gorgeous body – glances up at him as he approaches. “And what was there to discuss?” The professor asks, adjusting his wire rimmed glasses. “You write a paper, and I mark it. Your paper was dismal and dull. I simply marked it as I saw fit to.” Something about me is fucking dismal, Justin seethes. I’ll show him dismal with my fist so far up his fucking- “You took five percent off of my grade because I missed one comma, and I hardly see that as being fair.” Justin starts, setting the paper down on his professor’s desk. The same fucking paper that he worked on for hours with little to no sleep, and then re-read it about fifteen hundred times only to forget one motherfucking comma. “I read some of the other people’s work, and they barely ran a spell check but still had better marks than I did.” His teacher shrugs and turns his attention back to his no doubt fascinating work, “Then may I suggest, Mr. Taylor, that you either learn to write something that is worth my time, or you choose a new path for your so-called career.” “So, you son of a bitch. Are you famous yet?” Greig asks, tightening an arm around his friend’s shoulders as they exit the arts and literature building. The mid-fall air hits them in the face as they head down the massive concrete front stairs and start across one of the expensive, well manicured lawns. “When I get a multimillion dollar motion picture deal, trust me. “He laughs. “You’ll absolutely be the first to know. Seeing how you seem to live on my living room floor and everything.” Brian slides out from under his friend’s arm so he can light a cigarette, and all that Greig can do is smirk and tighten the heavy wool jacket around his torso as they make their way towards the student parking lot, and he figures that his friend’s changed a whole lot in the last couple of years. Came to college with the intent to get a law degree – his father’s wishes, and all that other bullshit. Too bad that nobody ever told Mr. Kinney that Brian switched degrees not a month after enrolling, and had been at the top of his class ever since. But he’d find out eventually, Brian reasoned. Maybe he’d tell the old fuck on his death bed, or in his coffin. At least that way he wouldn’t be able to yell. Or tell his mother. “…and she called it, fucking. Dismal. She said I should title it ‘teenage angst’, and how fucking ridiculous is that?” He snaps, flipping another page in the well worn menu, and it comes dangerously close to ripping right in half. He flips another page without even reading the first. “And my god damned Lit teacher, I’m going to rip his dick off. Not that he even uses it anymore. Fuck.” “…’Teenage angst’ is overdone anyways. Reminds me of Nirvana.” “Fucking right it does.” Justin agrees, and pauses his angry flipping of menu pages to take a sip of water, setting his mouth up for another string of happenings in his day that was as it usually is: completely fucking terrible. “Liam, fuck. I should just go back to the Pitts and enroll in some cheap local university. At least then I’d be done with it.” “And leave me in this fucking hellhole?” Liam asks, and widens his eyes over the cheap white candles of the pizza place that are already almost burnt down to the wicks. “Hardly. You don’t get to leave until I do.” Justin smirks and comes close to laughing for the first time as he whispers in a falsetto voice that he usually reserves for mocking other people in as he snickers, “How romantic.” Go to Chapter 2 |