#i have shitty sketches of all four of them but none of them are comprehendable to anyone other than me

[justablah56]

screaming and crying and in constant agony that I haven't had motivation to draw for the past few days and therefore cannot draw the 4 art requests I have rn

[artificialqueens]

pygmalion (katlaska) -- svetlana

summary: Justin had a habit of drowning in people with beautiful dreams and strange chins. Slow-burn in non-chronological order.

a/n: thank you so much for the response to astronaut! i was very nervous submitting a fic for the first time, but you guys have encouraged me so much. i tried to give back to the community – i wanted to answer the prompt i saw earlier for katlaska slow-burn on the topic of addiction. but somehow it ended up becoming something a little different (or a lot different from anything ive ever written – ft. the least graphic sex scenes ive ever attempted). hopefully, its good! 

The first time they fuck is just that: two men with mascara still clinging to their lashes, the last vestiges of Alaska and Katya hanging thin between them. They mark it by putting another stain on Alaska’s couch and knocking over that shitty bottle of cinnamon vodka they shouldn’t have tried. 

It goes like this.

“Oh,” Katya says, gesturing at the general region of Alaska’s crotch. “You know, I could take care of that for you.”

Somehow, that makes it worse. Suddenly, she can hear where this night will veer. Maybe it’ll be one bawdy joke and maybe it will be two, then they’ll go at it until Katya sucks something out of her dick, and then they’ll watch Golden Girls and she’ll stare at Katya’s toes curling in time with her laughs. It is a circle, Alaska decides, a bit that reruns even after it’s dead. It’s a sketch that she decidedly never wanted to be a part of. The entire thing seems exhausting.

This is the part where you remind yourself that you can never say no to her, Alaska’s mind supplies, but it isn’t technically true. It’s more like Katya makes it easy to say no; there are fifty million things that Katya wants at any given moment, and as much as she likes sucking dick, she’d be fine if they spent the rest of the night exploring conspiracy theories. But Alaska doesn’t want to say no. 

“This is a bad porno,” Alaska decides. “Go for it. Shoot for the fucking moon.”

At least Katya seems to know the script. At some point during the night, she’d started switching in and out of that disgusting Maureen voice and hasn’t stopped since. “Spread your legs for me, baby.”

“Okay, okay. Stop.”

“I’m like a dementor,” Katya says conversationally, “I haven’t actually left anyone a lifeless husk or anything, but –“ 

“No, like seriously, stop.”

It’s strange how no one talks about Brian’s jaw and how it connects the alien texture of his cheekbones to the sandpaper feeling of his chin. Alaska has never understood either and she presses her thumb against his chin, where his lipstick has smudged. He’s cold, she realizes. He’s cold and his jaw is clenched so tight he’s shaking. When he speaks, it’s clear that the lozenges from earlier have worn off.

Katya or maybe Brian says, “Are we going to do it the bi-curious college girls experimenting way? I can be Mary-Anne the dean’s daughter who’s rebelling against daddy and pursuing a women’s studies major, if you know what I mean.”

“Why are you trying to fuck me in character?” 

Fuck, she’s made it awkward. Brian’s eyes are wide enough that she can see the tiny dilated vessels, leftover from the vodka. She thinks it might be hurt, or shock, but they’ve both been in the industry enough to know better. Put enough of yourself into the woman you paint on and you’re Miss. Charisma Uniqueness Nerve and Talent. Too much and you risk confusing fantasy and reality. It’s a dangerous line that Alaska has learned to toe. Addicts, former or otherwise, must take caution not to lose themselves. 

How many seconds has it been? Brian is staring at the carpet. One of his lashes has fallen to cover his eye. His wig is gone with his corset and most of his clothes, and only the lashes and communist-red lipstick remain. He makes no move to speak, nor to remove Alaska’s hand.

Justin sighs and drops his hand to Brian’s shoulder, intertwining his other hand through his fingers. “I’ll do it if you’re sure you want to. But I don’t think we should.” 

A pause.

“Brian? You know I mean this in a I’m horny, but I’m also worried about you way.”

“No, no,” Brian rushes, “no, you’re right, I’m sorry, it’s just, it’s just that my thoughts are really fucking loud and also, did you know that I find you very attractive?”

“I’m Justin right now.” 

Brian blinks like the thought hadn’t even occurred to him, trailing his fingers up Justin’s forearm. “Aren’t you always? Wait, is this philosophy? I don’t think I can have sex and think about philosophy at the same time.” 

And it’s simple after that. Whatever’s wrong, it’s none of Justin’s business, and he’s never been one to turn down an invitation to keep things easy. There are better things to drown in, he tells himself, and his mind goes blank as they kiss with just a little too much tongue and Brian wraps his hand around Justin’s dick.

—

—

Justin wasn’t always so careful. Justin had a habit of drowning in people with beautiful dreams and strange chins. He remembers them in pieces. Phillip, Wesley, Sharon-Aaron, Sharon, Sharon, Sharon. He’d wanted to be deconstructed, unwritten, assimilated into something better than a boy who would never be brave enough to be normal. Sometimes he still wants to drown until he forgets Justin and Alaska and everything in-between. But that’s not what Sharon wants to hear.

“Good,” he says. 

Sharon stares back, unimpressed. “Why are you trying to lie to me?” 

“I’m not,” Justin says, and it’s true. He’s not really lying so much as he is making a policy of not telling his ex every single thing that runs through his head. Sharon should know that. Or maybe Sharon suspects something. He looks at his nails on the table. That’s probably it. Stripped of Alaska’s razor-sharp plastic manicure, they are pale and ragged. He frowns. They didn’t look so ugly this morning, but that’s the Sharon effect. Somehow talking to her has always made Justin feel like an idiot teen – all at once becoming too much and not enough. “I’m fine. You’re not responsible for my bad decisions.” 

Sharon snorts. It suits her more than concern, and a part of him thinks that this should worry him, that he thinks Sharon is at her most beautiful with scorn lining her lips. “That’s what I get for being one of your bad decisions.” 

“If you want to put it that way,” Justin starts. 

“I have four years of rage I haven’t used on you. I get very creative when I’m angry.”

This part is easy. Sharon smirks, still looking like the crazy punk dreamer who never entirely left the 90’s. Justin bares his teeth back – his horse-face, they called it. “What are you suggesting?”

“That I could read you for being a bitch, but I won’t.”

“It takes one to know one,” Justin drawls.

The teasing is new. Before, it had never really been so verbal – it had been cold fingers up Sharon’s sweater in February, nightmares and fantasies they’d whisper to each other in the mornings. They’d been serious. Sharon had wanted to build something and she could never find the words to explain how; only that she needed to destroy the world to make room. All Justin had known was that he trusted her vision more than his own, even when he was sober.

Thirty-two is too old for learning to create instead of destroy, to invent instead of borrow, but he has to try. But sitting across from Sharon, drinking coffee and not alcohol, he tells himself the world is ten shades brighter. 

“How are you really, then?” Sharon asks.

“Just tired,” Justin answers.

—

—

It starts with Trixie. “Have you seen Katya?”

“No,” Justin says. “Did something happen?”

“No,” Trixie answers. “Nothing. Just wondering. I’m not sure. I haven’t seen her in a while, and she mentioned that you’d been hanging out lately. Sorry if I woke you up. Anyway, I’ll see you later.”

The line goes dead. Across him, Brian snores softly, yesterday’s makeup smeared across his chin and the cushions. Justin will have to get a new couch soon, he tells himself as he shoves his phone across the floor. “You can stop pretending to be asleep now,” he tells Brian.

Morning in Los Angeles is jarringly pale and it has washed Brian of all color. Where the light hits his stubble, he seems brittle like he’s lost weight. He doesn’t open his eyes. “Five more minutes, Mom.” 

Justin pushes himself to his feet. He thinks he should expect something, or maybe feel something, but there’s only his stomach twisting itself into a post-clubbing knot. He lingers for a moment anyway, watching the way shadows settle into Brian’s cheekbones. Then, he heads into the kitchen and sets out the blueberries and pancake mix before he can change his mind. The problem is, he knows that he shouldn’t have lied. If anyone speaks Katya, or Brian, it’s Trixie with her strange ability to comprehend half Russian psychopath, half batshit American.

It’s not my problem. 

But is it?

Justin is good at reading people. He’s good at cataloguing sidelong glances and knowing when to joke, when to comfort. Sharon had told him her theory once, that all queer kids learn how to be invisible at the right times to avoid dangerous attention, how to do what people expect. Justin stirs the rest of his milk into the pancake mix. He turns on the stove, puts out a pan with a slab of melting butter. 

Something is wrong with Brian. It’s not the first time Brian’s annexed Justin’s living room after a show. The amount of tiny plastic hands lurking in wait between the couch cushions is atrocious. But bruises bloom beneath Brian’s eyes. Even after stealing all the blankets, he’d shivered all night. They’d talked yesterday at manic speeds, as if Brian had forgotten that Justin is barely proficient in his brand of logic.

Justin starts scooping the batter onto the pan. No, he decides. It’s not his place. Crazy as he can be, Brian is a private person. It strikes Justin that despite the fact that that he’s heard about every sexual encounter that Brian has had this year, he knows next to nothing about Brian’s life or his mind, that it sounds familiar.

(Once upon a time, there had been a boy who played so many roles that he lost himself.)

Then there’s Brian himself, standing in the kitchen doorway. He shifts from foot to foot, eyes downcast. For once, his awkwardness isn’t funny. Never one to miss an opportunity to get out of cooking, Justin places the spatula in Brian’s hand and pushes him to the stove. There’s a flash of something that tries to be a smile, then, nothing. Only Brian methodically stacking pancakes ceiling high on Justin’s Betty Boop plates.

Just as the silence threatens to swallow them both, Brian mutters, “Sorry.”

Neither of them are looking at each other. “But you didn’t want me to tell Trixie where you were.” 

There’s too much whipped cream on the pancakes, which is fine. Justin has an incurable sweet tooth. “I think I might’ve asked you not to yesterday.”

“I don’t remember,” Justin admits. “It was more like I saw the look on your face.”

Brian looks at the ceiling, contemplates the stains there. It’s the last five years mapped out in shadows that never really fade. He turns off the stove and drops the spatula into the sink. “Sorry.”

“Does it make you feel better to say you’re sorry?”  

“Not really,” Brian says, and for all that his eyes are oceans, it is nothing like a flood.

“I’m not sure what the problem is,” Justin says instead. “But you can keep coming here if you need a place. You don’t have anything to be sorry for if you just do the dishes or something.” 

Because there is a tightness in his lungs that feels like fire when Brian smiles, or maybe a breathless summer in Erie. Because there’s a quality about Brian that seems swing toward happiness no matter what, and Justin can’t help but want to make him laugh. And somewhere along the road, he’d realized that he could say no to the strange three a.m. conversations and crazy childhood stories, but that he didn’t want to. 

Because Brian says, “You’re a furry little gnome, and we feed you too much,” holds a straight face for one second, before collapsing into cackles. 

“You can’t ruin that show for me,” Justin cuts in, “whatever you do, that’s like the one thing, you can’t ruin Golden Girls.” 

But Brian is doing that scream-laugh that’s uniquely his, and Justin can’t help but join in.

—

—

The second time they fuck, it’s to Prometheus playing in the background. Brian’s dick is heavy against his tongue, and it’s spring and Justin is half-crazy from the moans and the way the couch cushions dig into his erection. And they climax like teens, all shuddering curses and sad, sad stamina. He tells Brian on the way to the trashcan, two used condoms swinging from his hand. 

“But okay, did you know, did you know that it’s been a few months? And it’s the craziest thing too, because I think it’s because a month ago, I was going through an occult research phase, and this like, orgy cult got my email and now I’m invited to their moonlit trysts every fortnight.”

Justin laughs. “Are you going to go?”

“I’m thinking about it,” Brian says. He crosses his legs, then his arms, and then makes a truly disgusting face. “I feel like it would be like, like, too soon? I think there’s a level of comfort with myself that I have yet to achieve.”

“So, not the fact that you don’t know if these strangers have STDs.”

Justin sinks into the couch, and Brian pulls him into his arms. Their height difference is such that Justin’s feet dangle off the armrest.

“Well,” Brian says reasonably, “you never know if strangers have STDs. Eating ass is an adventure.”

“So, when you offered to help Violet with her show, that wasn’t community service.” 

The arm around him shifts, shaking with laughter. “No, I got finished doing that months ago after they realized that yes, I did leave the stove on. And it wasn’t community service, I was exploring as of yet… ah, unmapped mysteries.”

“Don’t flatter the whore,” Justin says. 

Brian wheezes, slamming a hand onto the spot where Justin’s heart beats, his entire body curling inward from laughter. “Mama, are you worried about indirect kisses?”

“I wouldn’t call you indirect. I can smell you from my kitchen before you even knock.” 

The briefest touch of lips against his neck, and, “What do I smell like?”

Justin doesn’t remember the last time he felt this light, or even the last time he wanted to feel. Justin is new to wanting things for himself, caught halfway between mania and hesitation, where he can’t help but be too much because that’s better than not enough. But this is soap-bubble-thin and it’s so much easier to deadpan, “Desperation.”

It’s a cheap joke, but Brian laughs, soft and warm. “Did I ever tell you that you’re absolutely shit at reading me?”

“Don’t worry, I know.”

Brian goes still. “You know I’m fine, right? I don’t want to –“

“You’re not,” Justin says, and he has the feeling that Brian doesn’t know which question he’s answering either. He doesn’t want to have this conversation now. It’s too much trying to adjust and his mind’s still stuck on the joke he didn’t tell. “I don’t mind it. I –“

“It’s not fair to you, I know,” Brian interrupts. The hand on Justin’s back has stilled, and god he can hear every car coming down the street through these shitty walls. “You have enough to deal with right now, and I promised I’d tell you soon, it’s just spiraling out of control and I feel like I’m back to who I was ten years ago, and I really don’t want you to meet that person.” 

It should worry him, that the moment the emotion reel begins it all feels fake. Suddenly he is transported to grade school where he’s auditioning for a part, making all the exaggerated motions to the back row. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he’s still hanging onto Ms. Zhu telling him that he got the part, and he can’t stop thinking about the things he should do and say. The correct response is to turn around and look Brian in the eye, grip his hands and tell him that it’s more than two fools grasping at permanence. It’s more than two fuck ups in mourning, that you can make something beautiful out of everything ugly. But his thoughts are a storm and he has no real reason to be unhappy.

He wants Brian, or maybe he wants move back to Erie. He wants to shoot up. Justin has never been good at wanting anything.

—

—

“What do you think?”

“I think that we never watch Contact together and it’s a sign. Also, I’m so fucking scared, Detox, I like, am seriously considering going for someone who regularly admits to being a crazy bitch.” 

Detox gives him an unimpressed look. “Bitch, you’re not considering it. Stop trying to pull the shy act. I saw those drunk texts.”

Justin has to smirk at that. “Yeah, but sober is different.”

“Boo-hoo, you have to be responsible for your actions when you don’t have mind-bending shit in you, boo-fucking-hoo, grow up. How hard can it be? You’ve already –“

“Wow, I came here looking for sympathy,” Justin drawls. But it’s what he already knew, and he’s aware that he’s in danger of being slaughtered by Detox for being melodramatic. It’s simple, but –

(Brian turns his phone off and the car plunges into darkness. They are floating over mountains and clouds in a ski lift in Colorado and it sounds more poetic than it is. Later, he hears that Katya and Trixie are taking a break because Katya isn’t good at lines; she’s all the weirdness Brian was afraid to let out and Brian is half-in-love-drowning-mad. Later he hears that Brian hasn’t been on his phone in days, has deleted the half of his friends who are using. But now, there is only Brian and Justin huddling closer for warmth, then closer yet. Their lips meet, and, and, and…)

—

—

It’s the last thing he thought he’d hear himself say, “Let’s go back to testing it out then. Let’s just hang out, have a good time, let’s talk about shit. I’m probably going to fail at talking about shit right now, because I’m not having a good few months, and you’re not either, but I’ll try if you do.”

Brian blinks before he makes that gross noise again. “I never thought that you’re Trixie’s replacement,” he blurts out. His voice is scratchy like the words have clawed scars into his throat. “You were there at the time, but you’re not, I swear.”

He does turn over then, to find that Brian is looking at him with wide eyes. Up close, he can see that there are fine lines in the corners of those eyes. “Well, obviously. I can pass for a woman in the dark, and she can pass for a woman if you’re blind.”

There’s a quiet snort, and the eyes and nose crinkle together. “Oh my god, we were having a moment.”

Justin considers it, and decides to reenter the moment. “I hope you’re talking to her again.”

Brian frowns. “It’s the good thing about being a whore. Inevitably, something happens like lusting after your best friend and it’s somewhat socially acceptable?”

Justin raises an eyebrow.

“Yes, Mom, I’m talking to her and we’re halfway back to where we were, like good adults. Stop trying to reenact Thanksgiving Dinner.” Then, he tries again, leaning into Justin’s shoulder. “But it’s a little different. I guess we’re more, we’re more learning to laugh about it. That’s what we do.” 

“What do we do?” Justin asks. Outside of the tiny plastic hands in the couch, the apartment is clean for the first time in years. Justin’s books are ordered on the shelves, and the refrigerator is stocked with something other than takeout. It seems they’re both better at taking care of others than they are of themselves, and he can work with it. “Can we promise to tell each other when something is wrong? Like we’re joking about it now, but at the end of the jokes, I want to know about you.”

A stray bit of sunlight lands on Brian’s cheek. It’s warm to the touch. “I’ll try,” he agrees. 

Beautiful people with strange chins, Justin thinks. Drowning in them felt like justice. But he knows better now than to trade his ideas and for theirs, to lose himself in their visions. Beautiful people with strange chins who are different people, at the end of the day – just as he has changed. He thinks he’s learned how to be ambitious. 

He hopes he knows how to dream.