It had been a simple game of Battleship. He didn't know the actions he took during the game would end up dictating his life. Primarily B/D Brandon Val, with appearances by the rest of the gang and their respective relationships.
(originally started...
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(originally started on ffn and ao3 on 12/18/22)
This story takes place about the time of the eighteenth episode of season nine, with some tweaks and potential fooling with the season's timeline. As I have zero desire to rewatch anything from that season (especially scenes of the wannabe-Dylan and the wannabe-Brandon) to be certain of details, I may have mistaken which person moved into Bren's room when Val left. If the details are inaccurate; well, this season severely lacked in logic of its own.
We now return to February of 1999, where Dylan's world is about to be knocked off its axis.
xx
Mendacity had become his conservancy.
He had learnt from the best: the bastion of lies, the seeker of quagmires. His father, the late Jack McKay, had thrived on deceit, on abandonment, on casting aside the women he no longer found of use.
And he, Dylan McKay, had begun to follow in his father's footsteps.
The jerk women loved.
It had been a simple game of Battleship. Words spewed out before he could stop them. That was the hazard of words, he decided; once they had been said, they could not be reversed. They festered, elongated until they became demons of the mind. Of the soul. Of the atmosphere.
He had befriended his demons.
In his anger, he had severed his connection with the one person he had promised to never forget: the one who had helped him to face his demons head-on.
It was Steve Sanders who brought it to their attention that dreary day. Cheerful, reckless Steve, the boy Dylan had known since before their individual sets of parents had divorced.
Yet, even Steve didn't know what Dylan hid.
Steve wondered why none of them had heard from Brandon since the holidays.
Brandon. The name invoked a sense of nostalgia in Dylan, borne out of the last time he had seen the man who the others said was working overtime in a Washington newsroom for the Clinton campaign. He and Brandon had once discussed travelling to distant countries with their respective women; a discussion that had never come to fruition.
Thinking of Brandon had been a terrible idea, for it had only led Dylan to one thought.
Battleship.
That, of course, led to another B; a haunting B.
Brenda.
Telling Kelly during Battleship that he had only connected with two women, neither of whom had been Brenda Walsh.
The same Brenda he told Kelly he had left two years before returning to Beverly Hills.
He had lied. Why had he lied? It had come easy, the lie; too easy. Would it have been better to tell the truth? To have Kelly know that it had been Brenda who had asked him to choose? To tell Kelly that he had lacked the strength to make the decision?
