Work Text:
Brad Bakshi’s house, much like most of his life, can be described as anything but personal. Aside from two or so picture frames on the wall (one of a pig, another of a signed basketball jersey, none of himself or people , in that matter), the whole place is bare. White walls and plain marble tiles, expensive but inexpressive. Two-stories, one bedroom, high ceiling. Studio house, for himself and only himself.
Rachel went inside once; she’s one of the only people who makes it past the patio. She called it “standard rich person furniture.”
“Sorry,” she said immediately.
He shrugged it off. He wasn't exactly expecting compliments.
It didn't matter how people saw it. However you described it, the only real objective truth, the only thing that really mattered to him, was that it was his. It was his name on the lease, signed with permanent black ink. Brad Bakshi.
This is Brad Bakshi’s house.
At least, it was.
He’s usually a big picture kind of guy. He pulls strings knowing where it could lead him, thinking of ends instead of means. Very Machiavellian.
He calculates risks and rewards. He’s all about the bottom line because the bottom line is where he gets to sign his name.
The problem: Jo.
Jo’s chaotic, cunning, she reminds him of himself. He’s more present when he’s with her, thinking in the moment. When she was about to get arrested, he turned himself in.
“In our line of work, it's a good thing.” Bullshit.
“I did it for me.” Even more bullshit.
He did it for her. He’s lucky there's benefits, but they're more excuses than they are reasons. It was an on-the-spot, thoughtless decision because when Jo said Please Brad, it sounded like Please Bhaiyya.
The real, actual problem: Zack Bakshi.
You can imagine the absolute glee Zack had when he found out his little brother got arrested. Brad doesn't have to, because he saw it himself. He doesn't know how, but Zack managed to override the list of people Brad had allowed to visit him in prison (re: his lawyer and Jo.)
“You really are soft.” He said in between fits of laughter. Brad considered hanging up the phone and leaving mid-conversation, but he knew Zack wouldn't go out of his way just to gloat.
“Why are you really here?” Brad asked, teeth grinding.
“Ah,” Zack leaned in. “I sold your house.”
He said it casually, like it didn't just rip apart the very foundation Brad's life was built on.
Brad blinked. He said something in retaliation, but he can't remember what.
Zack waved his hand dismissively. “Don't worry. You still got the farm.”
And that's how Brad ended up with a shoddy, run down smallholding in the countryside.
He looks up at it, his hands gripped at his sides. It's walls are littered with holes and breaks. The patch of grass he’s standing on is dry and dying. His mistake is not selling it sooner.
The farm is basically a ranch and house his dad, Zack and he used to go to for the summer when they were young. Unlike Brad’s house, the place is personal. Unlike Brad’s house, it’s sentimental. Unlike Brad’s house, which was his own, this was handed down, inherited.
(His dad was cruel in an effortless way. Brad didn't attend his funeral as a big “fuck you!” to him, but he did attend the will reading. His dad’s bigger fuck you was giving him the farm. Here you go, pussy. Here's the place your beloved Kate got killed in.)
He looks at the small house right next to the ranch, equally as fucked up. This one was red, but the paint had already faded. The roof is a rainfall away from collapsing.
He takes a deep breath as he puts his walls back up. Then he says, “I know you're there, Poppy.”
He turns around just as she emerges from the bushes, twigs and leaves stuck to her hair. He noticed her following his taxi when he got out of prison. She probably thought she was being slick and clever.
“Hey, Brad!” She says awkwardly, walking towards him. “Brazza! Bradley! Br–”
“What do you want, Pop?
“You bought a farm?”
“Nope, I’m gonna sell one.” He says.
“Just got out of prison and already back to being a glorified salesman, huh?”
“What do you want, Poppy?”
“We need you in Hera,” They say at the same time.
She frowns. “Why’d you even ask me?”
He shrugs.
“Whatever. Go work in Hera.”
“Why?”
“Because Hera is a billion dollar concept and I think you're the best guy to actually get it to a billion dollars.”
“Interesting.” He says, because it was. He starts to walk to the house, Poppy follows behind him. He says, “But aren't you and Ian the creators of this game?”
“Yeah, and this is one of the only things we both agree on. Why do you care?”
“I don't.” He doesn't. “I just wanna see how easily manipulated you are in your current state.”
“Oh, not easy at all. I’m more confident than I’ve ever been.”
“You really do suck at selling your offer.”
“ Dick. ” She cusses.
“Right. I thought you two hated me.”
“Oh, that hasn't changed.” She pauses, thinking over her next few words. “But you're the only smarmy money guy we can trust.”
He laughs. “I got arrested for insider trading.”
“Yeah, and you probably have some selfish reason for letting yourself get caught doing that, but we don't care.” She fishes out a business card from her pocket.
It doesn't go unnoticed that Poppy implies she doesn't believe he actually did it. He takes the card and reads it quietly.
There's a crown logo over a cursive Hera. Under it, in block letters:
POPPY LI
Creative Director
XXX XXX-XXXX
“What's in it for me?” He asks.
“Well, what do you want?”
Brad looks at her for a moment, then back at the house. From the shattered windows, he sees tattered sofas and tables from when he was young. He presses his lips into a thin line.
He says, “Help me move some things while I think about it.”
Poppy rolls her eyes as if she expected it.
#
It takes a few hours before they finish moving most of the furniture outside in a big trash pile. Poppy had asked him a few questions while they did, all which were smoothly avoided.
“What happened to your house?”
“None of your business.”
“Why are we putting the furniture outside?”
“Don’t ask me personal questions.”
While showing off a picture frame, “Is that really you?”
“No, just some random kid.”
“This photo of a random kid was just hanging on the wall of your childhood staircase.”
“Yeah, now you’re getting it.”
When they were done, the sun was already setting. They were both breathing heavier, sweat beads falling from their forehead.
Poppy starts, “What are you gonna do with—”
“None of your business.” She says with him. “Yeah, whatever. So, Hera?”
His hands on his knees, he looks at her. He says, “I’ll think about it.”
Poppy rolls her eyes. “That’s good enough. Whatever. Just call me, okay?”
“Sure.”
She walks away.
He shouts. “Hey, you’re getting real good with that Porsche.”
“Oh, piss off!” She raises her middle finger at him.
She almost hits a cat while driving away. He watches her car disappear in the distance.
He looks back at the farmhouse, then at the pile of furniture and picture frames. It’s colorful, even tacky, and it looked like something from a family home. Each tear on the couch or scratch on the table made him remember days when he and Zack still came here.
That just made it more satisfying to burn.
#
“But I love arson!” Jo complains as Brad pushes the cart out the aisle in the hardware store.
“You know, you shouldn’t say things like that out loud considering I went to prison for you.” He says lightheartedly. “And, next time I burn my childhood belongings, I’ll invite you.”
“Thank you.” She takes some nails and puts them in the cart. “Why do you need tools again?”
“I need to fix the farmhouse. No one’s gonna buy it at its current state.” It’s a disaster. Every time he tries to fix a part of it, another part crumbles. He wrenched the sink a few days ago and the pipes started bursting.
She asks. “Why don't you just get a construction team to fix it?”
Because I got fined $5 million for insider trading. But he can’t say that, because it sounds like he’s guilting her, which he isn’t, because feeling guilty means taking the blame, and that's the exact opposite of what he taught her. But he knows she feels it anyway, even if she tries to hide it at first. She’s not good at hiding.
She said she just couldn't help feeling bad, wanting to make it up to him. When she said that, he thought she’d gone soft, started to blame himself for letting that happen, but then shook his head to get rid of the idea. His brain sounded a lot like Zack sometimes.
He answers her, “I like to try new things.”
“What happened to pottery?”
“I need another new thing, that didn't work out.”
While in prison, they had made an arrangement: Absolutely no professional talk.
It's perfect: since he's basically nothing without a job title, she can't relapse back into her power addiction.
(And, he can't lie, she's the only person he’d willingly have a personal conversation with.)
David was a cheat sheet. That man was both professional and personal.
When Brad learned Jo took his advice of detoxing from power by going back to assisting him, he was proud of her. He told her that.
She frowned at him. “Stop making me feel like I made the right decision.”
“That bad, huh?”
“He doesn't like my helpful tendencies.” Helpful, in this case, was her aggression. “I feel like a balloon about to explode.”
“Explode when I get out of prison. That’ll be fun to watch.”
#
They load Brad’s new equipment in Jo’s car (because stopping at his house wasn't enough, was it Zack?) and, as he puts in the paper bags, Poppy’s business card falls from his pocket. Jo picks it up, reads it and gasps. She’s about to say something, when Brad puts his hand up to stop her.
“No professional talk.” He says.
She rolls her eyes and hands the card back.
As mentioned before, Jo isn't that good at hiding. She drives the car with her right foot tapping, which is probably a bad time to be doing it. She wants to ask something, Brad knows it, and for the sake of not dying, he lets her.
“Professional talk ban temporarily lifted,” he says. “Spit it out before we crash and burn.”
“Are you going to work for Hera?” She says. “I know you have a lot of companies asking for you now—” How the hell did she know that? “But are you?”
“I don't know yet.”
“Do you want to?”
Of course I want to. “Maybe. I mean—I don't know, what's the point of getting street cred if I go back to people who think I’m nice?”
Jo furrows her eyebrows. “What do you mean?”
“I don't think Poppy believes I did insider trading.” He says. I think she knows me enough not to believe it . Is what he doesn't say.
“Do you want me to? Work for Hera, I mean.” He asks, knowing the two buildings are close.
Jo grips the wheel, deep in thought. She’s calculating the risks of her response, thinking which will give her the best end result.
He smiles at this.
She says, “No comment.”
That made him smile wider. “You're getting good.”
“Learned from the best.”
The car stops on a street all too familiar to Brad, and not the one he was expecting. Instead of the countryside, it was downtown LA. When he looks out the driver’s window, he sees his old house.
“Jo?” He asks.
She turns to him, switching off the engine. “Don’t you think it's unfair that someone else gets to have a money bin while you rot away in that farmhouse?”
“I don't...think I follow.”
She gets out of the car. Brad watches her from the passenger seat, watches her walk around the vehicle. Only when she gets a rock from his old neighbor’s garden does he intervene.
He gets out quicker than he thought he could and grabs her arm before she could throw it. “Let's not do anything drastic.”
“I need to explode and I want to help you. ”
“Okay, let me rephrase that. Let's not do anything illegal.” He says. “I appreciate the sentiment but I won't take the fall for you this time.”
Jo looks at him for a moment, then the arm he's holding slowly straightens, pointing at his old bedroom window. His eyes follow her finger.
It's Zack.
Zack’s in his house.
Zack's in his house. He’s in his bedroom, with his hands all over what used to be Brad’s.
He didn't sell it.
He bought it.
Brad lets go of Jo’s arm like he just touched a hot stove. His fists clench at his side. Spur of the moment, his words come out hoarse, angry. “Throw it.”
She does. The window breaks. Zack shouts.
They get in the car and drive away fast. Brad’s in the driver's seat this time, seething.
#
Jo doesn't help Brad fix up the farmhouse. He doesn't let her.
He has this intense inclination to finish fixing it on his own. That’ll show him. He’ll clean it up and sell it off and never see it again. Rid himself of the stain that is Zack Bakshi and start new.
This isn't a foreign feeling. In fact, it's nostalgic.
When Brad was 18, he managed to save enough money to leave his dad’s house. He rented a studio apartment in San Diego, near Stanford.
It wasn't great. It didn't have a proper bathroom. The kitchen was only a few feet away from his bed. But while it lacked parts, the only thing it lacked that mattered was Zack. Zack wasn't there. His dad wasn't there.
No one was there except Brad and it felt good. It was easy being alone.
He remembers looking up at the peeling paint of his ceiling and thinking about how easy and good it was. He thought of big pictures and of bottom lines and of himself. He didn't care about anything else. He couldn't, because anything else had died in the hands of his brother.
It was a mantra he repeated until it bled into every bit of his life. And his life slowly became work.
People in MQ called him cunning and manipulative and selfish. Not a pussy. Not soft or sensitive. He was Machiavellian. He was cutthroat. He was what everyone said he was, which was everything he wanted to be.
#
He may have gone overboard. He knows this because he’s pretty sure Jo’s worried about him. And he thinks this because David comes by the farm, and no one would know where it was unless Jo told them.
(Or Poppy, but he’s pretty sure she's forgotten the address out of spite since he never called her.)
David looks at the farmhouse and says, “You're kinda like the widow.”
Brad blinks. He opens the screen door between them. “Am I about to reject your proposal right now?”
David laughs, tries to hide the slight hiccup in it. “Ah, no. You’re agricultural.”
“Hm.” Brad says. “Why are you here?”
David lifts up a pizza box and a pack of beer, smiling.
Brad rolls his eyes and attempts to close the door. David manages to squeeze through the gap before he could.
“C’mon! It's a good bonding experi—Where’s your furniture?”
“Dav—”
“There's a huge hole in the wall—”
“David—”
“—Have you been sleeping on the floor?”
“David, get out.” He’s firm.
“Fine.” He steps out, puts the 6 pack down on the patio. "The real reason I'm here is because you won't let Jo help you rebuild... this." He points at the barely fixed farmhouse.
Brad says, " And I won't let you either."
“Brad, you got Jo worried. Do you know how fucked up you gotta be to get her worried?”
“Maybe you’re just rubbing off on her. You worry all the time. I’m doing fine.”
David laughs at this. "You're good at a lot of things but you're definitely not good at carpentry."
"And you're supposed to be?"
"Relative to you, I’m Jesus." David says. "Sorry, that was mean."
"No, I'm impressed. Jo's rubbing off on you. It's funny." A beat. “Was Jesus a good carpenter?”
“I have no idea. Sue probably knows.” David waves his free hand in the air. "Let me help."
"No."
A pause.
"Fine. Let me cash in my favor then." He says it in a way that he knows he's won. If anyone knew anything about Brad, it would be that his exchanges worked best when disguised as transactions.
(The nature of what Brad owed David isn’t well known information. Too embarrassing to even be thought about.)
Brad grits his teeth. “Fine.”
#
It shouldn’t be surprising information that having someone who knows how to fix a house makes it easier to fix a house, but Brad’s shocked anyway. At first, that shock comes from the knowledge that David wasn’t bluffing when he said he could. He really could, and he was good at it. He knew which tools to use and what part went where. After a week, Brad could go up the second floor by using the stairs as opposed to the pulls ups he did when he first came in.
It took months before the house started to look like a house again. The ranch finally felt like it could be used, even if Brad wasn't planning on using it.
He never actually felt like time was passing. They have a schedule for it, David comes after work and on the weekends. He stays for a few hours during weekdays but they work on it the whole weekend, at least until David has to go back home. Brad never lets him sleep over.
Sometimes, David will try his luck and bring pizza and beer, but always end up having to eat the pizza by himself.
In the rule book in Brad’s head, he probably shouldn’t allow this. There was one exception to his always alone rule and that was Jo, but David had this knack of wiggling into his life and stepping over any and every boundary he set. He tells himself it's David’s fault, it’s David who keeps breaking his rules and getting personal, even though a part of Brad knows that’s not the case.
“Do you think I’m a nice person?” He asks one day.
They’re sitting on the small patio of the house after the new coat of paint they put has finally dried. Brad allowed himself one can of beer, which was met with an enthusiastic shoulder bump from David, who acted like clinking their cans together was something he’s been waiting for his entire life.
Bonding experience! He said, drinking his third beer.
Don’t push it. Brad responded.
“Do I think you’re nice?” David repeats the question. “I mean, you got arrested. And by the amount of times you’ve joked about my divorce and my breakup, the answer should be no.”
“‘Should be?’ So that’s not your answer?”
“This feels like a trap.”
“Oh, it is.”
David laughs. “No, I don’t think you’re nice.”
“Then why are you helping me?”
David pauses at this, in deep contemplation on his answer. Kinda like Jo, but it’s not as calculating. It’s like he’s trying to think of the right thing to say, but it’s also the honest answer. He goes with, “‘Cause you’re my friend.”
“Oh , please!” Brad says, rolling his eyes. “What kind of kindergarten bullshit—”
“It’s not bullshit and it’s not childish to have friends, Brad.” David says. “I thought you’d know that because of Jo.”
“Jo is a coworker—”
“Now look at who's spewing bullshit. You’re unemployed. You have no coworkers.”
“Well, I don't have friends either.” Brad says. “If you think we’re friends, then you haven't been paying attention.”
“And what's that supposed to mean?”
“I just had you fix up this shithole for free. I manipulated you.”
“Sure you did.” David says flatly, not even trying to hide the sarcasm in his voice. “Okay then, as your free carpenter, I think it's time we fix up the room.”
Brad straightens, uncomfortable all the sudden.
The room is what David calls the locked door in the back of the ranch. It's boarded up with wood and nails, poorly so since it was Brad who did it when he first got the house. It was the only time he actually got close to the door.
When they started working on the lot together, David had pointed at it and asked what was in it.
“And why is it boarded up?”
“Because I don't want anyone to enter.” Brad answered, not looking at where he was pointing.
“So secretive.” David teased. “For all I know, it's your brand new money bin.”
“God, I wish it was.”
It wasn't.
“We are not touching the room.” Brad says. His voice is a bit more emotional than he expected. What emotion that was, he’s not sure, but his voice has a tone now, so he swallows a bit to calm down.
He and David are both too drunk to be having this conversation rationally. But they’re also too drunk to care.
David stumbles up. “C’mon. I’ve seen your childhood summer home inside and out. What else do you have to hide?”
“The room is off limits.”
“But why, though?”
“None of your business.” Brad says, wishing the topic would drop. “Plus, we still have to fix the roof.”
David downs the rest of his beer and throws it on the patio with a clatter. “You know what your problem is?” He wags a finger in front of him, opens his mouth to continue. Brad cuts him off.
“God, here comes another Brene Brown quote.”
David presses his lips to a thin line. He staggers off the patio, slowly walking away. Brad follows, mildly amused.
David continues, “You want people to stay with you but you don't wanna do the heavy lifting of letting yourself be vulnerable.”
“I don't want people to stay. I told you I work better alone.” Brad follows him inside the ranch absentmindedly.
“Oh, really?” David turns to him, arms outstretched. “Then why am I still here?”
It's then Brad realizes where David’s actually heading. They're almost at the very end of the ranch, to the boarded back door. Brad feels his feet stop on their own, like a step closer will melt his skin. He thinks he hears a faint pig squeal from the inside but quickly shakes his head, actively stopping himself from running and tearing the wooden planks apart.
David’s still looking at him. His words hang in the air alongside the ugly pause. Why did you let me stay?
Brad doesn't answer, because if he says it out loud it’d break the lie he’s been telling himself. The truth is locked behind the boarded back door, and if anyone tries to open it, he wouldn't know what to do.
But David's trying right now. His hand is on the doorknob.
Brad takes a sharp breath. The air doesn't come in like it's supposed to.
#
“Well that was embarrassing.” Brad says, his voice is squeaky.
The overwhelming panic he felt has subsided, the ringing in his head doubled down, though he still grips the grass of outside the ranch to ground himself. He has his knees to his chin, his back to the wall.
“Eh, it really wasn't.” David answers, sitting beside him. “You're lucky I brought pizza. You're gonna need some food after.”
Brad hums. He doesn't know if he’ll follow through with that advice.
The night is cold, the sun had set without him noticing. The stars are brighter in the countryside. His house used to have a big window looking out at the city, but he never really saw stars.
He and David sit in a sort of nasty silence. Thick, honey-like silence. They could hear the fireflies, it was the only thing currently making a sound. The middle of nowhere sounds a lot like the middle of nowhere. Brad never listens to it when David’s around. They were always talking.
His brain never does well in the silence.
He takes another deep breath, he knows David’s about to break it.
He was right.
“I’m sorry for trying to going there. We don't have to fix it if you don't want to.”
“Thank you.”
“Do you...wanna talk about it?”
“Not really.” Brad says.
“Okay. That's okay." He sounds genuine.
“I mean," Brad struggles. Then, "you already know it.”
David looks at him, confused.
“Jo told the entire office. I called it...a flickering moment of weakness.”
He could see the cogs in David's brain turning. “Kate.”
“Yeah." Brad clenches his jaw. "She was my pig and..." God, he feels dumb talking about it. He points in the direction of the room. “That was where she died.”
“What killed her?”
He shrugs. “Zack.”
#
Brad doesn't let David help him anymore. It feels weird now.
It wasn't like he did anything wrong, not really. In fact, he was very understanding about the Kate story, and he told Brad, “I feel like this is more important to you than you’re letting on,” when he noticed he was leaving out a lot of details.
It is, but he doesn't say it.
David doesn't push him to say it.
He appreciates that.
Brad likes Jo, of course he does, but she didn't really get why he is the way he is, how Kate tied into everything. She accepted it, which was more than he’s ever got from anyone, but she never understood it. David does.
He told Brad, "This is explaining a lot of things about you." And it's not mean spirited. It's just understanding.
It feels nice. It feels good.
And that's why he doesn't let him help anymore. That feeling is just weird.
#
The only thing left to fix is the roof.
Jo tags along on his shopping spree again. A lot more glib than usual.
He missed her, and he apologizes for being more or less absent for the last few months.
“It’s okay.” She says, and it sounds sincere. Her sincerity sounds unnatural, but it doesn't go unappreciated. “I’m glad you're okay.”
“You seem happy.” He says. “Did David let you help with something?”
“Oh, yes.”
“Are you gonna tell me what it was?”
She smiles at him. "No professional talk."
She really learns well.
#
He can fix it alone. He can do it.
He sits on the rooftop with the tools he bought spread around him. His right hand holds a hammer, the other holds his phone as he watches a Youtube video on how to do it.
#
Just his luck, it starts to rain.
Just his luck, he still hasn't figured out how to fix his goddamn roof.
He’s lying on the floor as he looks up at his work-in-progress. It's leaking now. It didn't use to do that. He and David had put it on the lower part of their priority list since it was originally just loose shingles.
The Youtube video told him loose shingles could turn into leaking ceilings.
He blinks as water drops in between his eyebrows. He can sleep through this night.
#
He doesn't.
A part of the roof fucking falls. Months of progress torn down in a second.
Brad’s out of the house now, miraculously unscathed. He stands under the rain without an umbrella. He’s gripping his phone inside his jacket.
He should call someone. Maybe Jo.
#
He calls an Uber.
#
David opens his door before Brad gets a chance to knock.
His outfit is confusing. It looks like pajamas but his raincoat is halfway put on, as if he's about to leave the apartment.
Brad blinks. Genuinely, "Oh, sorry. Are you going somewhere?"
David answers, "Um, well, yeah. I was about to get you."
#
David’s clothes are slightly baggier on Brad.
He’s only been in David’s condo once, when he helped him move from his old apartment. Brad called it a pity favor, and that it was a great opportunity to get blackmail material. He brought in David’s weirdly named boxes and described his furniture as tacky. It was a good day.
Brad sits on an ugly tie-dye couch on an equally ugly wolf carpet. There are motivational cat posters on the wall. It seemed as though halfway through printing them, David had ran out of black ink, since some of them looked greenish.
Brad’s drying his hair on a towel when David comes in with a tray of hot cocoa. He sets it on the glass coffee table (seriously, what was he thinking?) and sits right next to Brad, with a reasonable distance between them.
A pause. It's not the same silence as the last time in the farm, but it's similar.
They talk at the same time.
“David, I—”
“I’m gl—”
David closes his mouth. “Go ahead.”
“Sorry for popping in out of nowhere. It just started raining and—”
“The roof collapsed, didn't it?”
“Yeah.”
“It's fine. I should've helped you fixed it.”
“No it's—I wanted to do it alone.”
A beat. There was thunder booming outside.
David surprises him by saying. “I’m sorry about your birthday. I realize I never said that last time we talked.”
Brad’s eyebrows shoot up. He doesn't say anything.
“I’m not gonna make excuses for myself. I was selfish and I didn't listen to you and I was a pretty unreliable friend.”
Brad nods then says, “I mean, it's not like I didn't expect it.” He says it casually.
David frowns at this. “I—”
“Oh my God, David, you're fine. Zack just knows how to manipulate and take advantage of people. It's happened so many times I’m practically used to it.”
“That's exactly—Just—” He fishes his phone out of his pocket and scoots closer. Brad straightens, not exactly uncomfortable, but along those lines. He can smell David's shampoo.
David says, “I want you to know I’m on your side."
He plays a video.
It's grainy, shakily taken, like the hand is too excited with what's happening. Brad hears Jo’s laugh from behind the camera.
Two SEC officers stand outside the door of his old house. One of them knocks on it.
It takes a moment before it opens, and when it does, Brad can see Zack’s physical shift from cautiously suspicious to sickeningly manipulative.
His voice comes out positively tinny on the phone’s speakers. “Oh, hello. How may I help you, officers? Are you here for my brother?”
Oh, c’mon.
One of the officers stepped forward. “Are you Zack Bakshi?”
Zack’s smile fell slightly, but he picked it up almost immediately. “Yes. Why?”
The pair nodded at each other. One of them said, “Mr. Bakshi, you are under arrest for insider trading, market abuse, bribery, corruption...”
The list just went on and on.
It wasn't an arrest that could get you street cred. It was the type to get you blacklisted.
Brad watches his brother get ushered out of his house and into a police car. His fingertips feel electric, heart pulsing hard in his chest. It's a freeing feeling, a vindication he’s never really felt before. He bites his tongue before talking, just to make sure he wasn't dreaming
“Holy shit,” Brad says after a while. “Holy shit.” It's the most excited he's ever heard himself.
“Yeah, Jo helped me take him down. We made sure it was air tight.” David says, proud. “The house is once again yours.”
“For real?”
“Yeah. You can do whatever you want with it. You don't have to live in that shitty barn anymore.”
When Brad inhales, it's a bit jagged, so he pauses for a moment to make sure he doesn't embarrass himself.
He glances at the pixels of Zack flipping Jo off on the phone and smiles.
Finally, he says, "I owe you one."
"It's on the house." David shakes his head. "And it's more of an apology than a favor. I like you more than Zack, anyway."
Brad smiles at this. Jokingly, he says, "That's the first time I've ever heard that."
"I do, though," David says, sincere. "You could've been as fucked up as your family, yet here you are in a condo you helped me move into.”
Brad doesn't know what to say to that. He should be offended, but he isn't.
David takes his silence as a cue to continue.
“Look, I don't think you're a nice person. I don't think you're a nice person because you don't let yourself be a nice person." He says. "It's like...When you're building a house, you keep choosing straws as your foundation. You keep manipulating and acting like you don't care so when the big bad wolf comes, he blows your tower down easy."
Brad furrows his eyes. "I think I'm a little lost on the metaphor. Isn't this just Three Little Pigs?"
"Look, I'm not CW, okay? I can't make original, creative allegories." David explains.
"Oh, you haven't read any of his books, have you?"
"That's not the point. And, stop that. Don't think I don't know what you're doing."
"What am I doing exactly?"
David sighs. "You keep maintaining relationships at arm's length. You treat everyone you know like an acquaintance. You shouldn't be scared to let people know you."
"The way people know you?"
David shrugs. "Not particularly. I'm sure you have your own version of showing vulnerability."
A pause.
Brad takes a card from his back pocket, fidgets with its corners. It's soggy from the rain and the print got smudged.
POPPY LI
Creative Director
XXX XXX-XXXX
"Do you think Hera's still looking for a new monetization head?" He says.
David smiles at this. Own version. He says, “It's Poppy and Ian. They’ll probably fire their current guy once they see your name on the phone.”
A beat. The rain pours outside the window. Brad stares at it, the next few words clogging his throat like a seed. If he says it, he doesn't know how big it's gonna grow.
He says it anyway. "Can I stay the night?"
"You can stay as long as you want." David stands up from the sofa, about to leave. "It'll be nice to have a roommate again."
Brad nods slightly, even if he doesn't particularly agree.
He looks around. He's not taking back what he said, the place really was tacky. He wouldn't put the lamp so near the fireplace, nor would he choose the spiral rug for the kitchen, but he guesses he can't really have an opinion.
The condo wasn't his.
#
He sells his house. He carpools with David to work.
#
After a few months, the condo wasn't not his either.
And, for the first time in his life, Brad finally allows himself to have a home.