This is the twenty-fifth story in the Rewriting History series, and it follows Finding Not Keeping.

More angst, sad to say, but even as the end of this series approaches, I'm happy because I know that soon, Brian and Curt *will* be together again. :)

Warnings: m/m, AU, angst, occasional bad language (but not as much as usual, ;) ) and spoilers for the movie.

~Silk

*****

Wasted and Sunk

By Silk

Brian crawled on his hands and knees to the sink, using his grip on the white marble to pull himself to a somewhat shaky standing position. Avoiding the mirror, he panted and wiped his face with tremulous fingers. With an extraordinary effort, he managed to reach the wall phone.

He punched in a familiar extension and waited, the trickle of tears slowing but not yet stopped. When someone finally answered the phone, Brian sounded so hoarse, he was forced to clear his throat to speak. I need Security. Curt Wild is up here. I need you to Brians voice cut out, and he closed his eyes.

take him away.

*****

Abruptly wrenched to his feet by two burly guards, Curt yelled Brians name. When Brian opened the door, he saw Curt standing there, his arms outstretched, his legs spread part, looking for all intents and purposes as if Brian had just crucified him.

Barely composed, Brian whispered, Pleasedont hurt him.

Curt blinked away tears and tilted his head inquiringly. Brian? he croaked, his voice nearly gone.

Go away, Curt, Brian made himself say.

Dontsend me away, man.

Brian closed the door and slumped forward, his forehead touching the wood. I have to, he murmured to himself.

*****

Brian's dissolution was nearly complete. As he could have predicted, the fans turned against him, holding protests in the streets, burning his records and posters. At first, Jerry was thrilled by the free publicity. Money couldn't buy a story that could knock the Viet Nam War off the front pages in Britain. Then the same people who once championed Brian as a rebel without a cause now disavowed any association with him.

When Brian could no longer depend on his tenuous control of his emotions, he hit bottom. His mood swings, already alternating between irrational fits of rage and paranoia, became increasingly unstable. No longer comfortably numb, he sought out a variety of drugs to assuage the pain that strained his meager resources to the breaking point.

Cocaine was his drug of choice. It was easy to score, and he liked the way it made him feel. Omnipotent. But he paid a price for that feeling, the manic highs followed all too rapidly by lows that locked him inside himself for days at a time.

He couldn't tour, even if he wanted to. There was absolutely no interest in Brian Slade now, save for the occasional curiosity seeker who wondered whatever happened to him. And once his arrest for cocaine possession made the papers, it didn't matter that Brian was acquitted of all charges. He *was* guilty in every way that mattered. Only his money had stood between him and a jail sentence.

But he couldn't bring himself to care anymore. Life without Curt was a hell of his own making. Sooner or later he needed to accept that Curt wasn't coming back. Brian had finally succeeded in pushing him away...for good.

*****

Curt stared at the newspaper in disbelief. Buried on page six was a story detailing Brian Slade's recent arrest for cocaine possession. "Jack?"

"Hm?" Jack replied absently, studying the vibrant array of breakfast dishes on the table before him.

"Brian was arrested."

"Oh?" Curt wasn't fooled by Jack's deceptive calm. He knew that the older man fairly doted on him, and anything that hurt Curt ultimately hurt Jack. "For what?"

"Drugs."

That did get Jack's attention. "Drugs? *Brian*? I thought you told me he didn't use."

"He doesn't. Or at least...he didn't."

"Hm."

"Again?"

"Huh?"

"I said again?"

"Again what?"

"Hm. You said hm. Again."

Jack shuttered his dark eyes against the blinding light that was Curt Wild. "I was just wondering out loud."

"About what?"

"Why Brian picked up drugs. You've told me over and over that he needs to be in control. Someone like that wouldn't choose drugs."

"Sometimes you don't *have* a choice."

"You *always* have a choice, Curt. Telling yourself that you *don't* is a cop-out. You don't have to let him hurt you anymore."

"I know," whispered the younger man with the haunted gray eyes.

"You keep wanting what you can't have. You're so much better than that, Curt."

Instead of taking heart from Jack's implied compliment, Curt felt unexpectedly stung by the blatant reminder that Jack didn't think Brian Slade was good enough for him. Curt predictably retreated into the melancholy silence that was so much a part of him lately.

When he glanced at his friend, Jack sighed. Still so much pain there and no sign of it abating. His expression grew sorrowful. "I'm sorry, Curt, but going back to him would only be an invitation to more heartache than you could possibly imagine."

"He needs me, Jack."

"He needs drugs more."

"That's not *Brian*."

"It's not *you* either, Curt. Not anymore."

"Yeah," Curt said hoarsely.

"Do you really want to return to your old life?"

There was a long pause that disturbed Jack more than he could say. Curt wasn't getting over Brian. He pretended to function day to day, but he collected bits and pieces of Brian scattered this way and that like shards of shrapnel hidden within an emotional minefield.

"I won't go to him, Jack," Curt said dutifully, his gray eyes darker than Jack had ever seen them before.

Just as Jack began to breathe a sigh of relief, however, Curt added, "But if he comes to me..."

His voice trailed off meaningfully. Jack's dark eyes skittered anxiously over Curt's lanky frame. He was almost *too* slender now, but the loss of weight had merely heightened his vaguely exotic look, giving his sinewy body shadows that accented its newer, sharper angles.

"You'll do what you have to do," Jack said softly.

Curt's eyes flashed for a moment, and Jack could see that the old Curt Wild still lurked beneath the surface. He might be earthbound now, but the fire that once compelled him still burned.

"Yeah."

Maybe Brian needed to watch his back. Jack's faint smile gave him an enigmatic look. He almost felt sorry for Brian.

But not enough to warn him.

*****

Brian leaned back in the padded leather recliner and exhaled, blowing a gigantic smoke ring before putting out his cigarette in the nearby ashtray. Except for the bright blue wig he wore, he was completely naked.

His lips met in a kiss, and for a second, he wavered between laughter and tears. Sometimes he felt Curt's loss so keenly, he didn't know how much longer he could go on this way.

His fingers automatically reached for the razor blade on top of the low table and scooped up a large quantity of cocaine. He snorted the coke almost absent-mindedly and padded barefoot to the TV. It was a familiar scene, the *same* scene, played over and over. "To the sad demise of Maxwell Demon," Brian intoned, toasting his alter ego with yet another line of coke.

He was killing himself by degrees. But it was taking way too long.

He hit the rewind button, then stopped the videotape abruptly on the image of a pretty young man with long fair hair screaming epithets and gesticulating wildly at the cameras. At *Brian*.

There. That was it. That was what he needed to be reminded of. Every single fucking day.

His punishment. Doled out in painful increments.

They hated him. They should.

Curt did.

Brian sank down on the mattress slowly, pushing his latest one-night stand's bare ass out of his way. "Get out."

The sleepy young black man stirred. "Wha--?"

"Get lost. Go home. If you've got one."

"Don't you want to do it again?"

Brian groaned. No. He didn't want to do *anything* again. Everything hurt. Everything. But most especially the places inside him that cried out for his other half.

"Curt..." Brian murmured.

"What?"

Brian closed his eyes and fell back, his arm carefully covering his all-too-expressive face. "Nothing."

*****

Shannon had appointed herself Brian's personal keeper. Once Curt left, presumably forever, she moved in, effectively cutting out Mandy. Mandy was, after all, only his *wife*, and that in name only.

Brian barely tolerated her. He never forgave her for what she did to him and Curt. But he didn't have the energy to throw her out, and she knew it. She urged him to eat, but he took pleasure in thwarting her, convinced that if he died, *when* he died, that would be his final act of vengeance.

She brought the drugs and the young boys, and Brian hated her for both. She catered to his needs, thinking she would earn his eternal gratitude. Instead, he despised her.

He didn't know any other way to be. He was living without his heart.

Mandy might have loved him once. But even she was gone. Swept away in a vitriolic storm that ended what had been bright and beautiful between them with harsh words and deliberate condescension.

"You live...in terror...of *not* being misunderstood," Mandy screamed.

Brian, impossibly high on coke, chortled gleefully, stoking his manic energies with acerbic wit and surprisingly articulate quotes from Oscar Wilde. But Mandy was, finally, unable to withstand his sarcasm.

The relative calm of Mandy's casually offered, "Here are the divorce papers," was replaced by a shrieking "Fuck you, Brian!"

Brian continued to chuckle, that sputtery whiskey-and-tobacco laugh that used to make her, then *Curt*, shiver with desire. But now it was the maniacal cackle of a madman, driven over the edge by something he couldn't see or touch or feel. Ever again.

Curt.

He was still between them, even though he wasn't there.

Shannon bustled agitatedly into the room and announced apologetically, "I'm so sorry, Brian, I don't know *how* she managed to get in here."

Brian ignored her, his head lolling on his shoulders. He was starting to crash. Already. The highs never lasted anymore. But the lows did. The lows went on and on and...

He vaguely registered the sound of his wife arguing tearfully, first with Shannon, then with *him*, but he couldn't hold on to reality any longer.

"Tell me, Brian," Mandy's voice unpredictably penetrated his drug-induced fog, "did you ever...just for one *second*...want anything *more* than this?" She pointed to the squalor that surrounded him everywhere.

Brian shifted uneasily on the soiled mattress, a lucid moment abruptly taking him by surprise. "No," he said softly.

Shannon grabbed Mandy by the wrist and said, "Don't make me call someone."

"Call someone? *Call someone*?" Mandy echoed, rage and sheer frustration distorting her face. "I'm still his *wife*, for fuck's sake."

Shannon gave Brian a knowing smile, and Brian laughed. Mandy hated him for that. She hurled herself through the door, slamming it with considerable force, and the noise reverberated in Brian's head.

God, that hurt, Brian thought, holding his head, but he couldn't stop laughing.

Not until he was in tears.

He didn't blame her for hating him. If he had really loved her...he might have felt something more than regret.

But he hadn't. And he couldn't.

There was only one thing he missed in this life, and the knowledge of all that was and all that could never be would follow him into the next.

End