Brendan Jeremy Drake (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
betterplacetoplay) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
dreamlikenewyork2014-09-16 10:28 pm
betterplacetoplay) wrote in dreamlikenewyork2014-09-16 10:28 pm
"When you're sure you've had enough of this life, well hang on..."
Who: Brendan Drake and Justin Campbell
What: You're not alone
Where: Broadway, New York City
When: Around lunchtime
During one of their many heart-to-hearts, Brendan had asked his uncle if he thought there was anyway he could help Justin. If he could, he wanted to offer it up. It was just the sort of guy Brendan was. Caden had admitted that Justin could sometimes be a hard kid to read, or to express what he needed to get back on his feet. He did promise to talk to Justin's parents and suggest that Justin might like to spend some time with Brendan sometime, considering he understood what it was like to deeply care for someone with bipolar. Of course, Brendan hadn't thought it would be any time soon, but he got a call from Justin's father that morning and asked if he would like to have an hour or two with him. The only thing was that Brendan was still working at one of the Broadway theatres shadowing one of the musical producers, and that particular morning, it was just him with some members of the band he had hit it off with.
And perhaps, that was a perfect opportunity anyway. Justin's dad had expressed an exhausted confession that he didn't know what would help Justin or hinder him at this point, and if being in the theatre where he was supposed to have made his Broadway début that following week, being in the place he had been hurt to begin with, was too much, he and Justin's stepmom would be in a cafe just down the block and to call ASAP so they could come and collect him. Brendan thought there was a high chance that the whole thing would be called off and he was just sitting at the piano on stage reading some of the sheet music when the doors at the back of the theatre opened and Justin appeared.
From that distance, Brendan couldn't see how he was, but he walked down the middle aisle towards the stage. He wasn't approaching fast and he had his hands buried deep in the pockets of the hoodie he was wearing with a pair of grey track pants. It was a big thing to simply see the lad on his feet. Brendan only had a very censored version of what had happened to him, and that was the nuts and bolts of it. It didn't even touch the depth of what Justin had been battling in his head. Brendan got up from the piano and walked over to the edge of the stage sit down on it as Justin came up to it. "Hey, Justin," he greeted him with a smile and held his hand out to shake. "I'm Brendan, and it's a pleasure to meet you. I've heard many wonderful things about you from my uncle."
This was a huge step for Justin and he didn't know if he was ready for it or not. He had spent the whole night mulling it over and hadn't slept much. Between that and talking with Will online until the early hours of the morning, he was tired today and after this, he would probably go home and do exactly what he had been doing a hell of a lot of since he got out of hospital... crashing in bed. But now, this was a demon he wanted to be able to face, and if Caden's nephew was anywhere near as compassionate as Caden himself, it would be at least be a positive way to go about facing it.
He shook Brendan's hand the best he could with a bandage wrapped around his palm and gave him a very faint, wry smile. "I'd be impressed if anyone stuck to the 'wonderful' without mentioning the 'awful'," he admitted and then gave a small wave of his fingers. "Don't worry, I'm not going to climb up and leap off one of the boxes. Things have been tough, it's hard not to feel down. We don't need a giant elephant in the room or anything. I know I'm sick, you know I'm sick, and, um... apparently you're okay with that. Not weirded out by the fact I tried to kill myself a few weeks ago or anything like that."
Brendan shook his head. "No, not weirded out. Understanding, but not weirded out. Just let me start by saying that it's my sister who has bipolar and I know how tough it can be, but not first-hand. I can't even begin to assume I know exactly what you're going through. But I understand the condition and you know what else I understand? Music, and how easily it can get deep inside you to places nothing else can. If what my uncle says is true, you feel music in a very natural way that can't be learned, so I'm here to help you if you want to use that as an outlet."
Justin looked up at Brendan quietly and then lowered his gaze with a defeated shake of his head. "Really not in the right mindspace to be singing any songs from Footloose now. Or ever. Who knows? It's not just being sick, there's other shit going on with my life and I don't even really know how I got out of bed this morning. But..." he paused with a small frown, meeting Brendan's gaze again. "It does mean a lot that you wanted to talk to me because you understand. My family, they love me unconditionally and they want to protect me, but they're still learning what the understanding means. Just like I'm learning what having this horrible thing means."
Brendan gestured for Justin to come up on the stage with him. "Come on up. You know where the stairs are. I don't want you to feel like I'm talking down to you or at you," he explained and waited for Justin to come up to him. Once they were both standing there, he went back over to the piano and sat down. "Footloose is not the only music you are capable of, buddy. Not by a long shot. I'm going to wager a bet that it's a go-to for you. It used to be a happy place, it still hold a big piece of your heart, but that's not important today. How many songs out there are sad songs? About feeling sad, or lonely, or in pain? What song would you sing right now, out of all the ones you know, if you had to sing for your life?"
Talk about curve balls. Justin was looking at Brendan uncertainly right now, but the theatre was devoid of an audience and no one else but them were on stage right now. It wasn't an audition and Brendan wasn't pressuring him into anything. "REM," he ended up replying after analysing Brendan for a long few moments. "Predictable and cheesy, right?"
"Wrong," Brendan replied and offered Justin a small smile. "The answer actually is, there's no right or wrong answer. Now, if you said Friday by Rebecca Black, I might have to walk out and pretend we never met," he joked, because he knew Justin wasn't an entirely serious kid. He had seem him goofing off in rehearsals with Autumn and the other girl, he saw the spark he had when he was really into the performing. There was a sense of humour in there somewhere, it was just hidden under a lot of pain. He gestured to the microphone stand nearby and then played the first few chords of Everybody Hurts on the piano. "Do you know it?"
Justin swallowed nervously and then bit down on his lip. He hadn't been sure he would ever want to perform again, least of all for people. He still wasn't sure. But maybe he should just do it? He couldn't lose anymore than he had already lost, and it couldn't make him feel worse than the rock bottom he had in the recent weeks. Part of him wished his parents were here, and that Will was here, but then if they were, he probably wouldn't connect to Brendan as well as he could. There was no pressure. Nothing about this felt pressured. All Brendan was doing was giving him a leg up back into something he loved, coaxing him to use it to get in touch with how he was feeling.
So, he did. Or he was going to try anyway. If it made him feel worse, he could just call his dad and get him to take him home so he could bury himself in another cavern of blankets and pillows on his bed for days on end. He went up to the mic and cupped his hands around it, and he just started to sing. Of course he knew this song. This song had been what he was living in his head up and down for many months down. It was what he used to lock himself in his room back home in Chicago and listen to over and over after he had been bullied, harassed, or did things to try to cover up what he was feeling that made him feel awful.
What he hadn't told a soul, not even his dad, was that he nearly took his own life back in Chicago. It was the final straw before he got on the bus to New York. One night, late at night, he climb out his bedroom window, walked countless blocks for a length of time he still didn't know, and he tried to jump in front of an oncoming car. The person swerved and rode the car up onto the curb, and by the time they stopped the car, only running over a couple of trash cans and knocking over a rickety mailbox, Justin had just bolted in shock and spent the night huddled beside a grocery store dumpster freezing cold and bawling his eyes out. If there was a song he knew because he understood the very painful soul of it, it was this one.
Brendan would never know what was going through Justin's head at this moment, but he could see just from his face that it was a hell of a lot. No one else needed to be privy to Justin's headspace, as much they probably hoped they could be to help him. What he was invited into, and now live, was how talented Justin was. He could sing, and he wasn't just there going through the monotone emotions of a Karaoke performance. This was exactly what Caden had been telling him all along. Justin belonged on the stage, no matter what he was doing, and if he just took away from today that he could still sing if he wanted to - or needed to - that was all that mattered, not whether he would ever get up in front of an audience again or not.
Justin tuned out everything when he started to sing that song. He was just singing how he was feeling, and yes, he knew the song inside out. More than he knew himself inside out. He sung, and before he was even a quarter of the way through, he was crying. The tears were falling and he wasn't even trying to stop them. He went somewhere hidden away deep inside him that he didn't even know was a safe place anymore and by the time he finished and the theatre fell quiet again, he was breathless, and he pushed the dampness away from his cheeks when he felt a little shell-shocked. He had a heady feeling, not unlike the early sensation when you were about to faint, but gathered himself before it got to that. He stepped away from the mic pretty abruptly, though, like it burned him and he stood there like he didn't know what to do straight away. He was lost, and that was what exactly what he had been all along.
Brendan got up and fetched Justin a drink of water from the cooler. He brought it back and sat down again, patting the piano bench beside him. "Come sit down, Justin. Have a drink and catch your breath." When he was reassured the kid wouldn't keel over on him and hit the ground now he was off his feet, Brendan looked at him closely and then gestured just off the side of the stage to a camera on a tripod. "The lighting guys have been doing some digital testing this morning, so I want you to know that this has been recorded. But I can go right down there now and get them to erase the clips with you if you want me to. Unless you want to keep them. No copies, they won't keep them."
Looking over at the camera, Justin only thought about it for a moment or two. "I'll take it. My mom and dad will probably want it... or something. I don't know. Maybe they can play it at my funeral," he said with a sigh. "Look, I'm messed up, alright? More than anyone knows. There's not a single person who I have told the whole story and I don't think I ever will. I used to write it all down, but I burned the books before I came to New York because I didn't want to be that person anymore. The only thing is, when you decide you don't want to be a person, you don't get a free roadmap into who you want to be. At least, not people like me. All this is just... it's me clogging up a space some other person has probably been working for their whole lives," he said waving his hand around at the stage.
"You don't think you've been working a lot harder for it than most?" Brendan asked him then and then looked around with a shrug. "Maybe not exactly this. This theatre, this stage, this production. But can you honestly tell me you haven't been working for every single thing that led you here? That you didn't work to just get up and go to the bathroom this morning?"
The tears just welled up again and Justin closed his eyes, letting them flood his cheeks again. "I don't want to be that kid who just thinks they're more hard-done-by than anyone else because they've had a tough life and are entitled to spend the rest of it pulling the 'poor me' card. I'm not the only one. But i-It's not easy, and everything in my head is work because it doesn't seem to do lead me through things the way other people face them." He drew in a few shaky breaths and then rested his finger on the top of the piano. "This wasn't work. All of this it was... it was hope," he finally ended with a shaky whisper when his voice cracked and he just shook his head.
Brendan put his arm around Justin's shoulder in a soft, companionable hug because he needed it. If a hug was all you could offer someone, and you didn't, you had to be one cold-hearted piece of work. He rubbed his back, not saying anything further about this at this moment because Justin didn't need him preaching at him. All he wanted was to give the lad a foundation to ground himself again and he didn't know if that had happened or not. Justin probably didn't even know, and maybe wouldn't even know how to realise if it was or not. It didn't matter. Justin knew now that Brendan understood. That could be a priceless thing to someone in so much pain. "Do you play?" he asked Justin, lightly sweeping his fingers over the keys of the piano.
Justin nodded and sniffled. "A little."
"A little, huh?" Brendan asked with an encouraging smile. "Is this the bipolar talking, selling yourself short? Here, play me something or I might force you into a Chopsticks duet. We could bring the house down with that. You've got to at least be able to better me on Chopsticks. Heart and Soul, maybe?" And then played those few recognisable keys of the suggested song.
And with that, Justin had to give a bit of a teary laugh. "Do you know how long I've been trying to convince my boyfriend to go to FAO Schwarz and do that on the big piano there with me like in Big? I can't let you pop that cherry. I live in hope he might one day give in rather than just wanting to run and slide along the keys like a pro." He shook his head in amusement, but he was feeling just a hint of his spirits lifting and he really owed something to Brendan with this. "The Scientist?"
Brendan raised his eyebrows, impressed. He pulled the microphone closer and stood up so Justin could take the piano front of centre. He went to pick up his own guitar, looping the strap over his shoulders. "Sounds like a plan to me, buddy. But if we nail this, I'm keeping the tape."
Justin gave him a smile then and nodded. "If we nail it, you can keep copies of all of it." It was a breakthrough... for now, and sometimes you had to break through to remember how to see the light at the end of the tunnel again.
SCENE COMPLETE
What: You're not alone
Where: Broadway, New York City
When: Around lunchtime
During one of their many heart-to-hearts, Brendan had asked his uncle if he thought there was anyway he could help Justin. If he could, he wanted to offer it up. It was just the sort of guy Brendan was. Caden had admitted that Justin could sometimes be a hard kid to read, or to express what he needed to get back on his feet. He did promise to talk to Justin's parents and suggest that Justin might like to spend some time with Brendan sometime, considering he understood what it was like to deeply care for someone with bipolar. Of course, Brendan hadn't thought it would be any time soon, but he got a call from Justin's father that morning and asked if he would like to have an hour or two with him. The only thing was that Brendan was still working at one of the Broadway theatres shadowing one of the musical producers, and that particular morning, it was just him with some members of the band he had hit it off with.
And perhaps, that was a perfect opportunity anyway. Justin's dad had expressed an exhausted confession that he didn't know what would help Justin or hinder him at this point, and if being in the theatre where he was supposed to have made his Broadway début that following week, being in the place he had been hurt to begin with, was too much, he and Justin's stepmom would be in a cafe just down the block and to call ASAP so they could come and collect him. Brendan thought there was a high chance that the whole thing would be called off and he was just sitting at the piano on stage reading some of the sheet music when the doors at the back of the theatre opened and Justin appeared.
From that distance, Brendan couldn't see how he was, but he walked down the middle aisle towards the stage. He wasn't approaching fast and he had his hands buried deep in the pockets of the hoodie he was wearing with a pair of grey track pants. It was a big thing to simply see the lad on his feet. Brendan only had a very censored version of what had happened to him, and that was the nuts and bolts of it. It didn't even touch the depth of what Justin had been battling in his head. Brendan got up from the piano and walked over to the edge of the stage sit down on it as Justin came up to it. "Hey, Justin," he greeted him with a smile and held his hand out to shake. "I'm Brendan, and it's a pleasure to meet you. I've heard many wonderful things about you from my uncle."
This was a huge step for Justin and he didn't know if he was ready for it or not. He had spent the whole night mulling it over and hadn't slept much. Between that and talking with Will online until the early hours of the morning, he was tired today and after this, he would probably go home and do exactly what he had been doing a hell of a lot of since he got out of hospital... crashing in bed. But now, this was a demon he wanted to be able to face, and if Caden's nephew was anywhere near as compassionate as Caden himself, it would be at least be a positive way to go about facing it.
He shook Brendan's hand the best he could with a bandage wrapped around his palm and gave him a very faint, wry smile. "I'd be impressed if anyone stuck to the 'wonderful' without mentioning the 'awful'," he admitted and then gave a small wave of his fingers. "Don't worry, I'm not going to climb up and leap off one of the boxes. Things have been tough, it's hard not to feel down. We don't need a giant elephant in the room or anything. I know I'm sick, you know I'm sick, and, um... apparently you're okay with that. Not weirded out by the fact I tried to kill myself a few weeks ago or anything like that."
Brendan shook his head. "No, not weirded out. Understanding, but not weirded out. Just let me start by saying that it's my sister who has bipolar and I know how tough it can be, but not first-hand. I can't even begin to assume I know exactly what you're going through. But I understand the condition and you know what else I understand? Music, and how easily it can get deep inside you to places nothing else can. If what my uncle says is true, you feel music in a very natural way that can't be learned, so I'm here to help you if you want to use that as an outlet."
Justin looked up at Brendan quietly and then lowered his gaze with a defeated shake of his head. "Really not in the right mindspace to be singing any songs from Footloose now. Or ever. Who knows? It's not just being sick, there's other shit going on with my life and I don't even really know how I got out of bed this morning. But..." he paused with a small frown, meeting Brendan's gaze again. "It does mean a lot that you wanted to talk to me because you understand. My family, they love me unconditionally and they want to protect me, but they're still learning what the understanding means. Just like I'm learning what having this horrible thing means."
Brendan gestured for Justin to come up on the stage with him. "Come on up. You know where the stairs are. I don't want you to feel like I'm talking down to you or at you," he explained and waited for Justin to come up to him. Once they were both standing there, he went back over to the piano and sat down. "Footloose is not the only music you are capable of, buddy. Not by a long shot. I'm going to wager a bet that it's a go-to for you. It used to be a happy place, it still hold a big piece of your heart, but that's not important today. How many songs out there are sad songs? About feeling sad, or lonely, or in pain? What song would you sing right now, out of all the ones you know, if you had to sing for your life?"
Talk about curve balls. Justin was looking at Brendan uncertainly right now, but the theatre was devoid of an audience and no one else but them were on stage right now. It wasn't an audition and Brendan wasn't pressuring him into anything. "REM," he ended up replying after analysing Brendan for a long few moments. "Predictable and cheesy, right?"
"Wrong," Brendan replied and offered Justin a small smile. "The answer actually is, there's no right or wrong answer. Now, if you said Friday by Rebecca Black, I might have to walk out and pretend we never met," he joked, because he knew Justin wasn't an entirely serious kid. He had seem him goofing off in rehearsals with Autumn and the other girl, he saw the spark he had when he was really into the performing. There was a sense of humour in there somewhere, it was just hidden under a lot of pain. He gestured to the microphone stand nearby and then played the first few chords of Everybody Hurts on the piano. "Do you know it?"
Justin swallowed nervously and then bit down on his lip. He hadn't been sure he would ever want to perform again, least of all for people. He still wasn't sure. But maybe he should just do it? He couldn't lose anymore than he had already lost, and it couldn't make him feel worse than the rock bottom he had in the recent weeks. Part of him wished his parents were here, and that Will was here, but then if they were, he probably wouldn't connect to Brendan as well as he could. There was no pressure. Nothing about this felt pressured. All Brendan was doing was giving him a leg up back into something he loved, coaxing him to use it to get in touch with how he was feeling.
So, he did. Or he was going to try anyway. If it made him feel worse, he could just call his dad and get him to take him home so he could bury himself in another cavern of blankets and pillows on his bed for days on end. He went up to the mic and cupped his hands around it, and he just started to sing. Of course he knew this song. This song had been what he was living in his head up and down for many months down. It was what he used to lock himself in his room back home in Chicago and listen to over and over after he had been bullied, harassed, or did things to try to cover up what he was feeling that made him feel awful.
What he hadn't told a soul, not even his dad, was that he nearly took his own life back in Chicago. It was the final straw before he got on the bus to New York. One night, late at night, he climb out his bedroom window, walked countless blocks for a length of time he still didn't know, and he tried to jump in front of an oncoming car. The person swerved and rode the car up onto the curb, and by the time they stopped the car, only running over a couple of trash cans and knocking over a rickety mailbox, Justin had just bolted in shock and spent the night huddled beside a grocery store dumpster freezing cold and bawling his eyes out. If there was a song he knew because he understood the very painful soul of it, it was this one.
Brendan would never know what was going through Justin's head at this moment, but he could see just from his face that it was a hell of a lot. No one else needed to be privy to Justin's headspace, as much they probably hoped they could be to help him. What he was invited into, and now live, was how talented Justin was. He could sing, and he wasn't just there going through the monotone emotions of a Karaoke performance. This was exactly what Caden had been telling him all along. Justin belonged on the stage, no matter what he was doing, and if he just took away from today that he could still sing if he wanted to - or needed to - that was all that mattered, not whether he would ever get up in front of an audience again or not.
Justin tuned out everything when he started to sing that song. He was just singing how he was feeling, and yes, he knew the song inside out. More than he knew himself inside out. He sung, and before he was even a quarter of the way through, he was crying. The tears were falling and he wasn't even trying to stop them. He went somewhere hidden away deep inside him that he didn't even know was a safe place anymore and by the time he finished and the theatre fell quiet again, he was breathless, and he pushed the dampness away from his cheeks when he felt a little shell-shocked. He had a heady feeling, not unlike the early sensation when you were about to faint, but gathered himself before it got to that. He stepped away from the mic pretty abruptly, though, like it burned him and he stood there like he didn't know what to do straight away. He was lost, and that was what exactly what he had been all along.
Brendan got up and fetched Justin a drink of water from the cooler. He brought it back and sat down again, patting the piano bench beside him. "Come sit down, Justin. Have a drink and catch your breath." When he was reassured the kid wouldn't keel over on him and hit the ground now he was off his feet, Brendan looked at him closely and then gestured just off the side of the stage to a camera on a tripod. "The lighting guys have been doing some digital testing this morning, so I want you to know that this has been recorded. But I can go right down there now and get them to erase the clips with you if you want me to. Unless you want to keep them. No copies, they won't keep them."
Looking over at the camera, Justin only thought about it for a moment or two. "I'll take it. My mom and dad will probably want it... or something. I don't know. Maybe they can play it at my funeral," he said with a sigh. "Look, I'm messed up, alright? More than anyone knows. There's not a single person who I have told the whole story and I don't think I ever will. I used to write it all down, but I burned the books before I came to New York because I didn't want to be that person anymore. The only thing is, when you decide you don't want to be a person, you don't get a free roadmap into who you want to be. At least, not people like me. All this is just... it's me clogging up a space some other person has probably been working for their whole lives," he said waving his hand around at the stage.
"You don't think you've been working a lot harder for it than most?" Brendan asked him then and then looked around with a shrug. "Maybe not exactly this. This theatre, this stage, this production. But can you honestly tell me you haven't been working for every single thing that led you here? That you didn't work to just get up and go to the bathroom this morning?"
The tears just welled up again and Justin closed his eyes, letting them flood his cheeks again. "I don't want to be that kid who just thinks they're more hard-done-by than anyone else because they've had a tough life and are entitled to spend the rest of it pulling the 'poor me' card. I'm not the only one. But i-It's not easy, and everything in my head is work because it doesn't seem to do lead me through things the way other people face them." He drew in a few shaky breaths and then rested his finger on the top of the piano. "This wasn't work. All of this it was... it was hope," he finally ended with a shaky whisper when his voice cracked and he just shook his head.
Brendan put his arm around Justin's shoulder in a soft, companionable hug because he needed it. If a hug was all you could offer someone, and you didn't, you had to be one cold-hearted piece of work. He rubbed his back, not saying anything further about this at this moment because Justin didn't need him preaching at him. All he wanted was to give the lad a foundation to ground himself again and he didn't know if that had happened or not. Justin probably didn't even know, and maybe wouldn't even know how to realise if it was or not. It didn't matter. Justin knew now that Brendan understood. That could be a priceless thing to someone in so much pain. "Do you play?" he asked Justin, lightly sweeping his fingers over the keys of the piano.
Justin nodded and sniffled. "A little."
"A little, huh?" Brendan asked with an encouraging smile. "Is this the bipolar talking, selling yourself short? Here, play me something or I might force you into a Chopsticks duet. We could bring the house down with that. You've got to at least be able to better me on Chopsticks. Heart and Soul, maybe?" And then played those few recognisable keys of the suggested song.
And with that, Justin had to give a bit of a teary laugh. "Do you know how long I've been trying to convince my boyfriend to go to FAO Schwarz and do that on the big piano there with me like in Big? I can't let you pop that cherry. I live in hope he might one day give in rather than just wanting to run and slide along the keys like a pro." He shook his head in amusement, but he was feeling just a hint of his spirits lifting and he really owed something to Brendan with this. "The Scientist?"
Brendan raised his eyebrows, impressed. He pulled the microphone closer and stood up so Justin could take the piano front of centre. He went to pick up his own guitar, looping the strap over his shoulders. "Sounds like a plan to me, buddy. But if we nail this, I'm keeping the tape."
Justin gave him a smile then and nodded. "If we nail it, you can keep copies of all of it." It was a breakthrough... for now, and sometimes you had to break through to remember how to see the light at the end of the tunnel again.
SCENE COMPLETE