Archive of Our Own

Justin wakes up the same way he always does: at three in the morning, drenched in sweat, swallowing a scream and hiding under his blankets. He makes a cup of coffee from the same machine that’s on its last leg, that leaves a lingering coppery taste, that he’d bought for a quarter at the second-hand store on Hillary Street. He pours it into the same mug, off-white, curved handle, chipped on the bottom. He sits on the same mattress in the middle of the same floor and watches the same T.V., the same snowy reruns of Charles in Charge, with the same obnoxiously high volume to tune out the obnoxious sex sounds of his obnoxious neighbors.

The only things that ever change are the cars in the commercials and the weather that seeps into the drafty cracks of his second floor apartment.

Well, that, and the fact that, on this morning, his phone rings.

Justin answers it and knows before the person on the other end utters a word that someone has died.

No one would call him for any less.

“It’s Vic.”

*

He doesn’t know what to say. It’s not so much that he’s never been in Debbie and Mikey’s position, though that much is true. It’s not even a product of guilt, that he’d never had the chance to get closer to Vic like he should have, though he certainly feels it.

It’s just that it’s taken everything out of him to get here. The walk to the bus stop, staring over his shoulder, wheezing breaths, and then the bus on the corner of Lafayette and 61^st , which should not have been that crowded at six in the morning on a Tuesday, it had all but crippled him.

He sits on the third step of the staircase at Debbie’s, trying futilely to flex his shaking hand, to breathe breathe breathe, and Debbie is yelling at him—

“—the fuck are you thinking pulling a stunt like that? Look at—you see this shit?” she volleys over a shoulder to Mikey. “Get your ass upstairs and pull yourself together. Christ, everything’s gone to hell in a hand basket and this fucking kid, just roaming the streets at six in the—”

Justin locks himself in the bathroom, ignores Mikey’s tearful chides at Debbie to give him a break, Ma, sit down, just don’t worry about it, you don’t have to worry all the fucking time, oh God, Vic.

The image staring back at him in the mirror startles Justin, for just a moment. He doesn’t have mirrors back there, at his place, doesn’t like them, hasn’t for a long time. He touches his hair and angles his head, lets his bangs fall artfully over his eyes before flinging them to the side. He gets haircuts on the third of every fourth month—tomorrow, yet not, because it will wait.

He goes back down and sits at the kitchen table because the living room is full of Debbie and Michael and Ben and Hunter, and Justin grabs his right hand and strangles it, shoves it into the pocket of his sweatshirt and clears his throat.

“Deb,” he tries, but nothing comes out and Ben is still talking. He says louder, “Deb,” and everyone turns to look at him. Justin’s skin crawls. “How are you?”

She levels him with her best how fucking dare you look, and says, “The fuckin’ nerve asking me that, you showing up like this? I should chain you to the toilet for being so stupid, is what I should do. Wouldn’t be out walking the goddamn streets, working yourself up like this, and don’t think I can’t see your hand shaking over there, Jesus Christ, this kid. You see this fuckin’ shit?”

She fusses over Justin like a mother and her wily cub, and Michael is horrified and Ben is puzzled and Hunter looks like he’d rather be anywhere, but Justin just smiles.

“I know,” he says, and he takes the plate of fried eggs she offers him and wishes he could hug her more than anything, but he can’t.

Justin knows what the others are thinking. She’s not acting like she’s supposed to. She’s not responding right. She’s not crying and she’s not screaming, and she’s not reiterating what we all know to be true: that it isn’t fucking fair.

Justin doesn’t know much, he doesn’t know what to say, and he doesn’t know what she’s going through, and he doesn’t know how Deb’s supposed to be responding to this, but there’s one thing Justin knows better than just about anyone, and that’s this:

Life’s not fair.

He looks her in the eye and says, “I know, Deb, I know.”

She pours him some orange juice and her hand is shaking, too.

*

Justin stays all day. He’s useless. He knows this. The best he can do is clean up after the visitors, and even then, he sticks to the corners, folds his shoulders into his chest and prays that no one touches him, skirts the fray and grabs a glass, a plate, a jacket to fold, a tissue to throw away.

Deb doesn’t fuss over him anymore. He wishes the others would realize that this is cause for concern, not what they’d seen earlier in the morning. That had been a certain shade of denial, sure, but this is something worse.

This is the creeping surety of acceptance.

Justin’s upstairs when it happens, blowing his nose and popping an Advil. He gulps from the faucet and hears the voices filtered through layers of drywall and wood and home. Emmett doesn’t sound like himself, and only one thing in this world could distract Justin from the overwhelming wrongness of hearing Emmett subdued, and that would be—

“Brian.”

Justin thinks he can see it if he tries. Michael wrapped in Brian’s arms, still crying, always crying, and Brian whispering into his hair so no one can catch it, pluck it from the air and show it around, so that Mikey can keep it for himself, hide it away, put it in a pocket and tickle it with his fingers.

Justin stays in the bathroom for longer than necessary. He takes a piss and massages his hand, pushes the ball of his thumb into the flat of his palm, watches it spasm and shake when he tries to flex, before pushing it into his pocket.

Everyone has their pockets.

He takes the steps one by one, watching his shoes, the dirtied white of his sneakers against the worn wood of the stairs, and Debbie is—

“—get your goddamn muddy shoes off my fucking carpet, and don’t you even think about coming near me, disappear for three years and can’t even remember your—” Her voice doesn’t die. It just pauses.

It’s like that thing about a pin dropping. Since every eye in the house is currently glued to where he stands on the fourth step, Justin can’t really do anything but hold his head up, straighten his shoulders and try not to fold into himself.

He takes the last steps slowly, tries to smooth the agitated crevice in his forehead, just between his eyes, and fails miserably. They look from Justin to Brian and back, like a game of ping pong, or like a game of ping pong just broke out between two ex—

Nothings, really.

Justin says deadpan, “A little melodramatic, don’t you think?”

Brian just tongues at his teeth, looks away while Justin skirts the crowd of people into the kitchen, picking up a glass along the way.

“Guess that haircut will have to wait, huh?” Emmett sits at the table and rests his cheek on a fist, giving Justin a smile that’s more tired than anything.

Justin shrugs. “It’s not going anywhere.”

He remembers Emmett taking him four months ago, and four months before that, and four months before that, the way he flirts with the stylists and positions himself against the counter just so, hip jutted out, lashes batting playfully as Justin counts in his head back from one thousand. Fingertips and gentle yanks. Snips and cold water.  Eight hundred and two, eight hundred and one, eight hundred…

“How are you?”

Justin’s eyebrows knit together once again. “…fine. I’m not the one who just lost my brother.” Justin tries for a second to imagine a life with Molly. To imagine her being sick like Vic. To have that closeness, to have it for a lifetime, and then to lose her.

He can’t really fathom it. His sister basically hates him.

“No, I mean…” Emmett gives the most unsubtle gesture toward Brian in history.

Justin sighs. “So?”

“So?” Emmett gives him an incredulous look. “So?”

Justin shrugs and puts the glass away, clears the counter and covers the casserole. “Help me get the chairs from upstairs?”

Emmett raises a hand in defeat, shaking his head. Justin might explain to him that he’s not seventeen anymore, all rose-colored glasses and begging for a scrap, just a morsel, just a glance, just say my name, but then he’d have to lie and tell Emmett that Brian Kinney means exactly shit to him.

The truth is that, here, it’s cold. It’s hard and disappointment and death and failure and dark and unfair and maybe love exists, maybe it does, but Justin can’t feel it like he used to, and he doesn’t want to try.

Let his seventeen year old self keep it, where love is all hope and innocence and sweetness and butterflies and sunshine.

Sunshine’s been gone for a very long time.

*

He tries going home not too long after. It’s not that he cares that Brian is there, or that it seems as though Brian cares that he’s there, it’s just that everyone expects them to and it’s making his head hurt—making his head fucking throb—all those eyes, two by two, waiting and tip-toeing, and Deb’s Advil isn’t going to help him.

“Like fucking hell you will!” Deb stands guard in front of the door and dares him with her eyes to argue. “You won’t last two blocks, let alone the fuckin’ bus. Get your ass back in—”

“I’ll take him.” Brian stands up and everyone else flickers relief, as if to say Finally. Finally something is happening, a prelude to acknowledgment, normalcy, their expectations met.

They look at Justin and expect him to argue, he can see it in their eyes. I’m fine, I can do it myself, I don’t need you. They expect bitterness, stubbornness, tooth and nail.

“Whatever.” Bitterness is such a waste of effort for Justin.

Michael frowns and is about to maybe offer to do it himself, but he has a family, yes, a mortgage and a husband and one-point-five kids, and Brian and Justin leave them all in their discomfort and mourning and vague disappointment.

Justin tells Deb to call him if she needs anything, but since that’s a joke and they both fucking know it, each of them turn away at the same time, varying degrees of emptiness in a mirror image.

The car is warm, almost unbearably so, and completely spotless. A stick shift. Justin settles into his seat and rubs his temple as Brian maneuvers it into the street.

He lights a cigarette, exhales in a sigh, “Where to.”

Justin gives his address and stares at the sky through his window, presses his hand into his stomach where it’s hidden in his pocket and thinks it might rain.

He doesn’t feel compelled to fill the silence. Neither does Brian, but then again, he never had.

“This it?” Brian asks when they arrive. He squints up at the building, leaned over the steering wheel and sucking on the filter of his cigarette. “How very Tiny Tim of you.” His eyes slide to Justin’s.

“Yeah, thanks for the ride.” Justin’s almost to the steps of the building when he hears Brian’s car door close. He stiffens instantly. No one comes into his apartment, not even Emmett, not even Justin’s mother, not even Ethan—not anymore. “I didn’t invite you in,” he says when Brian sidles up to him.

Brian throws his cigarette to the ground and squints in that annoyed, condescending way he does. “I wasn’t waiting for you to.”

If it were any other day, Justin might have had the strength to dig his heels in. He has to do it sometimes. Not with his mother—she’ll cave to just about anything nowadays—but Emmett and Deb, occasionally Lindsay. Keeping people at an arm’s distance is about as much exercise as he’ll ever need.

He hasn’t had enough of it to square off against Brian.

He inhales, long and deep, and presses the door open, takes the steps to his floor without much thought of the footfalls behind him.

He keeps his place clean. It’s not much… just one room, some crates, a mattress, a mini fridge he’d salvaged from Mikey’s old place when Emmett offered, but still. It’s clean. Everything has a place and a purpose. Everything is used, is a part of his routine. To someone like Brian, it’s probably past the edge of poverty, but Justin has everything he needs. He lost his taste for excess a long time ago.

He raises a hand when he’s inside, as if to say, Here it is, deal with it. He doesn’t catch Brian’s expression, doesn’t really care what it might hold, just goes to the plastic-clear two-dollar container holding his abundance of prescription bottles and dives in.

He takes two of the white ones, and if his hand is shaking too hard to properly close the bottle, then Justin could really care less. It’ll be better in forty minutes, and there’s a lot novelty in knowing.

Brian takes the bottle from the counter and reads the label, brows creased as he absentmindedly screws the cap into place.

“You closed it wrong,” Justin says. When Brian looks at him, he explains, “You have to put it on upside down, or the childproof will be a bitch.”

A lazy smirk creeps to Brian’s mouth until it gapes open, tongue pressing into the corner. He raises his eyebrows, leaning back into an almost-step.

Justin rolls his eyes. “Oh, hilarious, I can’t get past the childproof,” though he has to swallow an impulse to grin back, flips him off instead. “Ever the asshole, I see.”

He doesn’t check if Brian closes it properly. “You have more narcotics than my dealer,” he observes. “How much for an Ativan?”

Justin pokes around his box, listing, “Valium, twenty dollars. Soma, thirty. Ativan…” He grins at Brian. “Priceless.”

“Ah, I taught you well.” He mock bows.

Justin gnashes his teeth and turns away. He thinks, Don’t. Don’t look back.

When he turns back around, Brian is there, staring at him. “What?”

It could be a second, could be five, but it feels more like an entire day, Brian just staring at him like that. Like he’s waiting, watching, looking for something that’s only thinly veiled, just beneath the surface, and he’s so sure it’s there.

Maybe, with the way his lip curls and his eyes thin, he doesn’t find it.

Brian scoffs, without comment or explanation.

Justin gives him the box and offers, “Take what you want.”

Brian’s still watching him when he taps two Ativan into an open palm. He opens another bottle, barely glancing at the label, and pours out three of those. Then another, probably the Valium, and takes one, pauses a moment, takes another, and closes all of them, caps upside down.

He doesn’t say goodbye when he leaves, just stuffs the handful of pills into his jacket, spinning on his heel.

It’s like Justin said.

We all have our pockets.

*

Justin is late for work that night. His boss is a total dick, even after Justin explains the death in his family, says, “This is what I get for hiring these people,” and Justin’s not sure what people he means. Disabled people? Young people? Fags?

The ticket booth of Liberty Cinema is just like he left it: sterile and organized, small and confined. He relieves Shelly, who’s two years younger and apparently terrified of him, from duty and takes the seat at the counter.

He gives prices from a microphone, slides tickets through a slot, and never has to look anyone in the eye. There are only four buttons to press (matinee/feature/adult/child), and he can manage everything one-handed. He’s alone, secluded and secure, behind an inch of shatterproof glass.

He’s never been happier.

*

The funeral is on a Friday. Justin’s mom comes to get him, has his suit carefully covered in clear-drycleaner-plastic hanging in the back. She doesn’t say that he doesn’t have to go, probably knows that he’ll just argue and tell her to drop it.

She does say, “Brian’s in town,” and he can tell she’s waiting for a reaction because that’s what everyone does nowadays. They’re all waiting for him to—

Justin’s not sure, truth be told.

There was a time years ago, just after it all happened, when Justin was angry. Well. Understatement. He was fucking furious at everything and everyone, Brian especially, and he wasn’t afraid of letting it be known on a fairly constant basis. He wouldn’t remember trashing his room or hitting his mom or punching himself in the head until it was bruised and tender, but he does remember the destruction and pain and disappointment that followed. He doesn’t do that anymore, is too tired to even muster the energy necessary to feel something like that, but sometimes.

Sometimes Justin wonders if maybe everyone wishes he were still like that—were just a little less numb.

With his mom, it’s different. She’s not searching and she’s not expecting any one reaction; she’s hoping. In fact, he thinks if he squints he can see her praying, Please let him react, a smile, a frown, just anything.

Justin says, “Yeah,” and pretends he can’t see her dissatisfaction. He used to try. Before Ethan happened, Justin would fake his way through it, but he knows better now. You can only fake it for so long.

*

He gets dressed in the bathroom of the funeral home, Emmett outside the stall.

“—but they’re all booked up for the weekend, so I was thinking Monday. Or maybe Tuesday, if I can get a lunch break, we can stop by that new little boutique and see what I can do about Teddy’s curtains, because my god, you have no idea…”

Justin steps into a shoe, assures, “I’m not in any hurry. I kind of like it long.”

“He likes it long alright.”

Justin wills himself not to tense. He hadn’t heard Brian come in.

“Well, don’t we all, but in this case we’re referring to hair, and trust me honey, longer in this case is not better, so. Monday or Tuesday, your pick.”

Justin steps out of the stall, shaking his head. “Either is fine, but… boutique shopping doesn’t really thrill me, just so you know.”

Brian puts a hand to his chest, gasping, “What kind of world do we live in when a fag isn’t thrilled by the prospect of leopard print microfiber and pink feathers?”

Emmett agrees, “A tragic one.”

Brian assesses Justin with a pensive expression, deciding, “Though there is something to be said for a good—” When Brian tries to touch his hair, Justin flinches away so carelessly that his elbow slams into the handle of the stall. Brian blinks, lets his hand fall. “…shag.”

Justin holds his elbow and watches Emmett watch Brian watch Justin, like a filter of reaction, a day in school when a whisper passes from person to person and then gets back to you jumbled and disfigured.

Emmett’s reaction whispers, Awkward, but what he says is, “Well. Everyone loves a good shag.” A small laugh. “Uh. Ready, there? Dollface?”

Justin follows Emmett all the way into the chapel, but he doesn’t share his pew since it’s crowded, sides pressed against sides, too much contact, sweat and bodies, skin pores and friction. At the last moment, he opts for one of the empty rows further back, pushing down a swell of regret when he sees Deb all the way up there, unattainable, unreachable.

“What the fuck are you doing?” Brian’s eyes are all scrunched in annoyance, back straight, hands in his pockets flung out enough to expose his sides. Justin doesn’t know how he does that—looks so apathetic, even when surprised.

“Sitting,” Justin says, mocking. “You bend your legs and put your ass on the—”

“Yeah, no one knows where you put your ass better than I do. Why isn’t it up there with everyone else.” Justin doesn’t know how he does that either—turns a question into a declaration, says one thing but means another.

“Too many people,” and since Justin knows Brian well enough—and it’s a close thing, really—to know what he’s actually digging for, adds, “I don’t like touching.”

He does make him work for it, though. “Okay, I’ll bite.” A deep breath. Brian sits, has that faint grimace of disgust—like he’s just tasted something sour. “Given where you live, which I approximate to be pretty much dead center of Liberty Avenue, you get points for originality. Must be quite the novelty, a pretty little twink who’s not a fan of touching.”

“These days, you don’t find homos touching on Liberty Avenue much period.” He smiles without looking at Brian. “It’s less of a novelty than you think.”

“Yeah well, Stockwell’s long arm of the law doesn’t extend to funeral homes.”

Justin remains silent, watches as more people filter in and fill the rows, one by one. Someone sits on theirs, on the other end, far enough away that Justin doesn’t care, but soon…

He might have to move.

Vic had a lot of friends, but Justin never knew, couldn’t have really, that so many people would arrive. Men, women, queens dressed to the nines. If Vic were here, he’d have a joke or two to make about this. Something about wigs and duct tape.

“Jesus, you are such a fucking pussy.”

Justin raises an eyebrow, turning enough to look at Brian’s profile. “Okay?”

He laughs, tongue poking at his cheek. “...pathetic.”

“Okay.”

“Drama princess gets bashed, becomes a recluse and cries himself to sleep. This and other not surprising news at nine. My god, I can hear the violins...”

Justin has to laugh at this. Even if his pew is filling up and he’s about four bodies from throwing himself back a couple, he snickers into a fist.

Brian finally looks at him then, gives him a long, disbelieving look.

“My ex,” Justin explains. “He was a world-class violinist.”

Brian stares at him with that same blankness he probably spent years perfecting, right before he bursts into laughter, head tossed back.

Everyone’s staring, but Justin can’t help it. He doubles over, trying futilely to quiet his snort-slash-giggles. He composes himself before Brian does, straightening his back and staring into many pairs of astonished eyes.

He mouths, “Sorry,” to Deb and feels awful, but only just so.

She’s grinning harder than anyone in the room.

Brian clears his throat, barely apologetic. “Well I guess no one can accuse you of bring original, after all. Shame, seeing as how someone who 'doesn’t like to touch' having a boyfriend is so impressively ironic.”

“Well,” Justin sighs. “He’s my ex for a reason.”

“Because you’re pathetic,” said into his ear.

Justin fights a cringe that’s less to do with the words and more to do with the breath that hits his skin. “Because I’m pathetic.”

Brian leans away, clucking his tongue. “Can’t believe I wasted so much effort on you.”

“Not much at all, really.”

Brian huffs a laugh that doesn’t sound amused. “I liked you better. Before.”

Justin looks at Brian and repeats, “Not much at all. Really.”

“Christ,” loud enough to get looks from the couple being added to their pew. “Someone get the recluse a table: pity, party of one.”

“I know what you’re doing,” Justin says, lifts a shoulder. “You’re not going to piss me off.”

It’s at this point that another couple moves to take their pew, so Justin stands.

“What are you doing.”

“Going back there,” Justin points to one of the farther, empty pews, and tries to move past.

Brian grabs his jacket. “Sit down.”

“Stop.” Justin yanks the jacket from his grasp, but then Brian’s hand shoots out, grabs Justin’s waist, and Justin doesn't know, has no fucking idea how he didn't see this coming. This is what Brian does. You have a wound all open and festering, and Brian will fucking poke at it, prod it until it bleeds.

This is what Justin gets for telling him.

Brian, louder now, “Sit the fuck down.”

Justin yanks, and he doesn't want to show this, doesn't want Brian of all people to see him so frantic, he doesn't, but he is, and he tells himself to just, breathe, one thousand, nine hundred and ninety nine, nine hundred and ninety eight, nine hundred—“Don’t!”

Brian’s grip tightens, pulls, tugs him back until Justin crashes back into the pew, rolls his eyes. “Calm down.”

Justin’s arm shakes. He’s still yanking, sneering, “Don't,” nine hundred and ninety three, nine hundred and ninety two, “Let me go, let me...”

“If you’d calm down and stop queening out for one—” A grapple, a shove, the swatting of hands, an elbow into a shoulder, nine hundred and eighty seven, nine hundred and eighty six.

“Get off—” and his fist makes contact with Brian’s rib, nine hundred and eighty, nine hundred and seventy nine, a kick at his ankle, some spittle flying in the clash from clenched teeth and flexed necks, tendons stretched taut.

Brian grabs his wrist and pulls him closer, swipes a hit to his arm and wraps it behind Justin, over his shoulder until it curls around his shoulders, vice-tight, painful. “Calm down,” he hisses, teeth gnashed. “Let go.”

They duel like this long enough that Brian’s face is red and he doesn’t hit Justin back, not even when Justin takes aim at his face, glancing a blow to his jaw, but he does grab him tighter, eyes just this side of furious, and there will be bruises on Justin’s arms, on his neck and waist, that bone on his hip that’s crushed into Brian’s.

Justin grunts, shoves with his palm, ducks his neck, nine hundred fifty one, nine hundred and fifty, but Brian’s got him pinned against his body, knee to hip to shoulder.

“Stay back,” Brian says, and then, “Back the fuck off,” barked, like a command, not to Justin—no. To someone else, someone close, someone trying to intervene.

“Back off,” he says again, pulling Justin tighter, so tight, too tight, nine hundred and forty four, nine hundred and forty three. “Stop. Justin. Stop.”

He doesn’t stop. Another shove, tries to bite Brian’s arm, but it’s nothing more than a graze of teeth in the periphery of Justin’s blurred vision, murky, hot and wet.

“I can’t breathe.” Pleading now, clawing at Brian’s arm, fisting a handful of his jacket, watches it tremble, eight hundred and twenty eight, eight hundred and twenty seven.

“You already are. You’re breathing. Listen. Listen.” Pinning a flailing hand to Justin’s chest, where it spasms against his grip, hot and damp and bruised.

Wheezing. “I can’t—Brian—“

“You are. Relax,” he says. Warm, into his ear, “Let go.” Repeated again and again, jolting with Justin’s shoves, softer, grunting, “Let go,” panting, “You’re fine.”

Justin gasps for air, eight hundred and… and… smells him, the scent of aftershave and fabric softener and Brian, feels the tingle in his jaw, the strain in his neck, the pinprick of bad circulation to his fingertips.

He hangs on, presses his temple into Brian’s shoulder when the grip around his shoulder finally slackens, panting into the fabric of his jacket, coarse and thick. Justin sniffles long and wet, blinks his eyes and feels the wetness on his cheeks.

Their chests are heaving.

Justin can make out shapes and sounds, the flutter through his hair, fingers combing, lips against his head.

“You’re fine.” Soothing masked as exasperation.

Justin blinks at the faces in the aisle—too many to absorb. His mother’s owlish face, Deb, Lindsay and Ben, Emmett.

He shudders, manages to unclench a fist from Brian’s jacket long enough to wipe a cheek with jerky, stilted motions, gulps in air, lets himself tremble, lets himself smell and see and hear and breathe.

Justin lets Brian touch him. “I’m fine,” he says, voice rough like sandpaper, grit in the edges, thick and slow.

He can practically feel their collective sigh.

They retreat, one by one, in varying degrees of both annoyance and shock. Justin’s mom takes the pew directly behind them, and then it’s just Deb and her red, resigned eyes.

“You couldn’t just get him some fucking flowers like a normal person, could ya’?”

*

The service is beautiful.

Probably.

Justin will never really know, because Brian’s fingers keep running through his hair. Over the course of the service, he sighs twice and clears his throat once, shifts one leg over the other and is warm and solid and smells amazing and still familiar.

Justin falls asleep like that, head resting on Brian’s shoulder, Brian’s arm around his neck, hand carding through the ends of his hair, and then his scalp, pressing down, massaging, soothing.

He doesn’t know how long it lasts, just that there’s this buzz in his head, not altogether unpleasant. Like the first time you smoke a cigarette or hold your breath too long. Everything aches. His neck, his wrists, his knee, muscles he hasn’t used in a long time.

When he wakes up, it’s dark. The chapel is empty, and Brian’s fingers are still in his hair.

They abruptly still.

“Justin?” His mom. “I have to go.” And he can see the question in her face from where she’s bent over, feet away, eyes big.

“Okay.” Whispering, like the moment is somehow this delicate, fragile thing. Don’t move too fast, don’t talk to loud. As if he could scare it away.

She smiles, but he can see the doubt there—the fear. “I’ll call.” A nod.

When she’s gone, Brian’s fingers move again, just a flutter, gentle and unhurried. “Wanna go?” he asks.

Justin says, “No.” Quick, insistent, presses closer and inhales the fabric beneath his cheek.

Brian’s fingers keep moving.

*

They can’t stay forever. They watch people collect the flower arrangements at the front, tidy up the pews and sweep the floor. When the chapel closes, Justin turns his head into Brian’s shoulder and smells him, sighs and lets Brian be the one to sever their connection.

Of all the hurtful things Brian has ever done, turning him away, pulling away, shutting him out, rejecting him, calling him names, never choosing Justin, just settling for him, leaving here and never asking Justin to follow, just commanding him to let go, and never looking back, never coming back, not for Justin, not when he was in the hospital almost dying and not when he finally came home—of all these things, nothing has ever hurt Justin more than this moment:

Brian stands, breaking their various points of contact and smoothes a hand down his front, flattening wrinkles and stretching his back.

It hurts and it’s not even his fault.

Justin doesn’t cling to his side, and he doesn’t grab for his hand or tug at his arm. He follows him to the car and crosses his arms, shivers and flexes his jaw. “You missed the funeral.”

Brian lights a cigarette, holds his arms out wide, as if to say, Here I am, deal with me. “Like Vic would give a shit.”

The ride to Justin’s is quiet, just like before, only this time Brian doesn’t follow him inside, doesn’t even shut off the car.

Justin has the worst nightmare of his life that night.

When he comes to, he’s hitting the floor, face-first, and he can’t tell if the pain is from the fall or the dream he’s had, but it swells around his cheek and stabs into his skull, and Justin’s cry is probably heard all the way to the fourteenth floor.

It isn’t until he can finally lift himself on shaking legs that he realizes he’s in the hall of his building. He stands there for a moment, disoriented and blinking sleep from his eyes, cradling his face, catching his breath, and Justin shudders.

His feet ache as they take him back to his apartment, the kind of throb that can only be caused by the desperate pounding of his feet against hard floor, and it’s the first time, the very first, that Justin’s ever run from a nightmare.

He usually hides.

*

“Purple isn’t a good color on you.” Brian spares a glance at the line behind him and grins as it grows. “Should I ask about the other guy?”

It takes Justin longer than it should to understand what he means. He fingers the swollen ridge of his cheekbone, shrugging. “I fell.”

“Down a flight of stairs? Into a door? I thought we already established your devastating need to better strive for originality. I’m disappointed.”

“You’re holding up the line.”

“Why are you here?”

Justin sighs, lets his mouth hover closer to the microphone as he explains, “It’s called work. I come here and serve the patrons of this establishment, and in return am compensated for my time. I can work up some diagrams if you’re having trouble—”

“You,” Brian says, “are still a smart ass. Good to know. But I was wondering why you’re working here when—”

“If this is going to turn into some motivational speech about following my dewy-eyed dreams of being an artiste, then you can go ahead and spare me the bullshit. That ship has sailed.”

Brian looks away with a laugh, thumbing the corner of his lips. “Actually, I was going to point out the fact that Liberty Diner is about one disgruntled customer from closing down for the day. At noon. Lunch rush. You know, seeing as how Deb had a complete mental breakdown last night and no one’s around to cover for her or the other two waitresses who are apparently ‘sick’, which I’m assuming is code for ‘hungover’.”

“Oh, well.” Justin clears his throat and eyes the growing line behind Brian, annoyed. “Nothing I can do about it.”

A shrug. “Plenty you can do about it.”

Justin takes a breath, long and calming, and he will not let Brian get to him, he won’t. “I can’t handle the plates. Or the coffee pots. And the diner is crowded and small and I’m already working.”

Brian scoffs. “Excuses.”

“Reasons.”

Someone yells at Brian to move your gorgeous ass, you fucking prick, and Brian leans forward, his grin wide and wolfish. “Okay, Sunshine, here’s what’s going to happen. You’re going to get your pretty fucking ass out of that booth, and then you’re coming with me to the diner, where you’ll take orders and bring all the hungry homos of Liberty Avenue their Pink Plate Specials and you’re going to smile while you do it, and you want to know why? Because Deb needs you to come through and save the day, and I want my goddamn fries. Understood?”

In response, Justin pulls his microphone closer, beams through the glass at Brian and sweetly says, “Here’s what’s really going to happen. You’re going to buy a fucking ticket, get the hell out of my line, and then you’re going to walk into this theater and watch whatever piece of shit they’re passing off as cinema nowadays, and you want to know why? Because a guilt trip coming from Brian Kinney means exactly fuck all to me.”

Before Brian can even form a response, Justin adds, “Oh, and… the next time you call me Sunshine, you’ll be picking your balls up off the ground, which is where I will drop them when I cut them off.”

They’re smiling at each other. It must look ridiculous, because it’s all malice and gnashed teeth, and not one single ounce of fondness is present there. They grin wider and wider, until—

Brian says, “One adult, matinee,” and Justin prints his ticket, swipes his credit card, and tells him to, “Have a lovely day.”

*

Ten minutes later, Brian storms through the door to his booth, grabs the back of Justin’s collar and yanks him from his seat.

*

And you see, it’s not that Justin cares, because he doesn’t. It’s not that he feels guilty, and it’s not that Brian convinced him to leave. It’s not that Brian basically forced him to, it’s not that he almost pretty much sort of touched Justin and left him shaky and off-balanced and he barely had enough air in his lungs to protest, and it’s definitely not any creeping desire for triumph that makes Justin follow Brian out of Liberty Cinema.

It’s not any of those things.

It’s that when his boss had appeared and demanded to know why Brian had stormed into Justin’s booth, that Brian had said, “It’s a family emergency, very urgent, he needs the day off,” and his boss had told Brian, “This is what I get for hiring these people.”

And Brian, Brian who is Brian Kinney and doesn’t take shit from surly old men in tweed jackets, Brian smiled and politely wondered, “Exactly what kind of people do you mean?”

And it’s no surprise when his boss spits, “Faggots,” because Justin isn’t stupid, it’s just that ignorance is bliss, and now Justin knows.

Now, Justin knows.

Now he can never go back. “You fucking asshole.”

Justin’s better now, he is, eight hundred and twenty three, eight hundred and twenty one, and Brian doesn’t touch him, doesn’t have to, just leads the way across the street and down two blocks, and the sidewalks are fucking busy.

Eight hundred and eleven, eight hundred and ten, “Where do you get off—”

“Over there once,” Brian gestures at the alley they pass, then at the small market store on the corner. “There, twice. And well, I got off in the street once, over here, I think—or was it a street over?”

Justin dodges an elderly woman whose eyesight probably fails to note the daggers he’s staring at every passerby, the ones that warn, Keep Away, and he pulls his arms closer to his body and eight hundred, seven hundred and ninety nine, “I don’t have a job now.”

Brian’s checking someone out, a young guy in tight pants and jogging shoes. “The apron that’s waiting for you begs to differ.”

Justin stops in the middle of the sidewalk, backs into an empty alcove and tries to catch his breath. “I can’t. This isn’t a choice. It’s not like I woke up this morning and decided to be like this. I have limitations, and the more I fight them, the worse it is. Doesn’t that matter to you?”

Brian gives him an unimpressed, dispassionate look.

Justin laughs shortly. “No, of course not. Silly me, thinking you cared about anything but yourself.”

Brian sighs. “I know, I hate it when people do that.”

“Cut the crap.” Justin rolls his shoulders, shakes out his wrist. “I know you’re trying to help, but it doesn’t work like this, Brian. You can’t just throw me into a crowded room and expect me to be magically cured. You think I haven’t tried that? You think I haven’t tried?”

“I think you’ve tried,” Brian replies, stands to lean against the wall, by the sidewalk so that Justin can only see the sharp edge of his profile. “But you’ve never tried with me.”

Justin thinks, the only thing I’ve ever done with you is try. “What makes you think it’ll be any different.”

“It’s always different with me, isn’t it?” Brian twists his neck around to look at Justin, and Justin thinks, always and never.

*

He doesn’t last five minutes in that place.

Justin barely gets through the door, around the booths, to the counter, behind the counter, before he has to crouch down and let it hide him, let his hand tremble and his lungs constrict, head between his knees.

“I can’t, I can’t.” He’s lost count. He hates losing count.

Brian watches him from over the counter, draped over it and peering down. He looks bored. “You aren’t trying.”

“I’m trying.”

“Bullshit. If you were trying, you would have taken something. Xanex, Ativan, something.”

Justin snaps, “Well I wasn’t exactly expecting this when I left the fucking house this morning.”

Brian rolls his eyes, but his head disappears, and when he leans forward again, he’s holding out a palm. “Here.” He empties two pills into Justin’s hand, the blue pills he’d taken from his box the other day. He says, “You’re replacing those tonight, Indian-giver.”

Justin swallows them dry and he wants to tell Brian that medication doesn’t solve everything. It doesn’t stop his hand from shaking, it doesn’t stop his base instinct to avoid contact, and it doesn’t stop his eyes from watching, the way he steps into a place and scrutinizes it, unconsciously, for every available exit. No matter how much medication he takes, Justin will always sleep with his back against the corner. He’ll always know who’s behind him, how tall they are, what their expressions are like, what they’re wearing, how bulky their pockets are, and how loud their feet fall, always.

The medication is a band-aid, a two-inch strip of cotton-covered adhesive stuck onto the bloody stump of a missing limb.

Brian wouldn’t understand, anyway. “So now you’re good. Let’s go, order’s up.” He slaps the counter and sits on a stool, and since he’s only just right there, and so is the order counter, Justin gets him fries.

So, in reality, he really doesn’t do it for Brian, and he doesn’t do it for Deb, and he doesn’t do it for himself either, not for the triumph or even for the money. Mostly, Justin spends his Monday afternoon behind the waist-height barrier of Liberty Diner’s counter because in all honesty, running from his nightmares hurt far worse than hiding from them.

*

Brian’s there the entire afternoon, even when he’s not. He goes to the bathroom or hits on jogging-in-tights-dude or joins Emmett in a booth seat or talks to Mikey and Ben when they come in, but he’s never not there.

“This is… new.” Michael looks neither pleased nor displeased at seeing Justin skitter back and forth behind the counter.

Emmett says, “Our little Dollface is moving up!” and makes smooshy faces that Justin wrinkles his nose at.

Ben says, “I think it’s an impressive show of progress.”

And Hunter says, “Want to get your dick sucked?” only he’s saying that to Brian, and he’s leaned in a little too close for flattery, and Brian, well.

He smiles, and it’s vaguely appreciative. “Some kid you got there, Mikey.”

“Yeah well, if he doesn’t stop propositioning my friends, I’m not buying him dinner.”

They bicker and they banter and Emmett steals a lemon square from Ben’s plate, and Mikey thwops Hunter against the head with every bit of crude innuendo that spews from his mouth. Brian makes snide remarks and sardonic commentary on the local political climate, and Justin.

Justin drops five plates, undercharges two customers, overcharges three, spills four cups worth of coffee, burns himself twice, burns the customers more, and he doesn’t say anything that isn’t I’m sorry, and Have a nice day, and What can I get you.

He’s reminded of the crowd far more than he wants to be, grating voices and the terrifying buzz of daily commotion that’s thriving all around his barrier. People with children and lovers and siblings and friends, parents and proud people, loud people, In-Your-Fucking-Face people, and he thinks about how every continent is nothing more than an island, just floating out there in one continuous, infinite sea. He thinks about how nothing is tied-down or connected without the thinnest of threads.

He thinks about being threadless.

*

“You did decent.”

Justin drops his keys onto the table, shrugs out of his jacket. To say that he’s tired is an understatement. “I gave someone second degree burns.”

Brian shrugs. “Like I said, decent. Room for improvement.”

“No one got their food on time, I hyperventilated twice, and broke the day’s profit in dishes.” Justin can only rub at his temple and sift around his box for the white pills. “They’ll be lucky if they don’t get sued.”

Justin flinches when Brian leans over him, plucking the Xanax bottle from its place. “People want to sue McDonalds,” he says as he dumps three into his palm. “They want to sue Starbucks. They want to sue Wal-Mart. Those people actually have money. Their design aesthetic isn’t dependent upon rainbows and little plastic men with their dicks hanging out.”

“I think you’re confusing the diner with Woody’s.”

“I think you’re confusing the patrons of the diner with people who expect quality service.”

“I’m not doing it again.”

Brian hums a low, “Hmm…” and then, “Yes. You are. Every day this week, actually. Those hangovers are kind of rough.”

Justin guesses, “You rigged the schedule.”

“Justin,” Brian tisks. “I’m not sure I like what you’re implying. I can assure you my intentions were pure and unclouded by any low opinions of Kiki, The Fry Nazi.”

“You shouldn’t have done that, Brian,” is what Justin says when he opens his window. He sighs, lets the air touch his face and curl around his hair. “I don’t want to go back.” He looks at the lights of the city, the darkness of the alley below, and he tells the world, “It’s fucking lonely.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” And back then, this maudlin sort of confession, it would have drawn the snidest of grins from him. “There were people everywhere.”

Justin says, “Exactly.”

But Brian doesn’t mock him like the old Brian would, and he doesn’t tell Justin that he’s not alone like Emmett would, and he doesn’t have expectations like his mother does, and he doesn’t fill the silence with empty promises of getting better, just give it time, just be patient, I’ll be patient, we can do it together, like Ethan always has, never has.

Brian plasters himself to Justin’s back, and it isn’t pretty. It isn’t easy and it isn’t an embrace. It’s pushing and pulling, a tug of war and fingernails digging angry crescents into the fleshy skin of Justin’s palms, because he’s running, because he doesn’t want to, but he’s just too fucking tired to fight. It’s his heavy breathing, his stomping foot, the bend of his spine and the crack of knees against the hard wood of his floor. It’s folding and pinning and low whispers, gasping breath, aching lungs, and Justin’s body, twisting away, and Brian’s body, just turning with it.

It’s a struggle, a fight, shining silver gauntlets against the leather of a shoe. It’s red and gold and fucking cars crashing, metal against metal, the screech and suspension of time, and it’s not, it’s not an embrace.

Until it is.

And then it’s still all of those things, really. It’s still pain and thundering pulse, strategy and folding and bending spines. It’s still tears, it’s still fucking sobbing, only now.

Now Brian is behind him, folding Justin into the curve of his chest, cradling the weight of him between his legs, and he doesn’t rock Justin, but they sway from side to side, and if you asked, neither could probably tell you who’s doing it—it just is.

“Tomorrow,” Brian says into Justin’s temple, and if Justin shudders, if Justin pushes him away before he pulls him closer, then Brian doesn’t mention it, doesn’t care, isn’t fazed by it at all. “You’ll do it again. You’ll do it the day after that, and the day after that, and then you’ll wake up, and you know what you’ll do?”

Justin breathes into the curve of Brian’s elbow, lets Brian brush his hair back and peer into his eyes, feels boneless and weary and deliriously alright.

Brian says, “You’ll do it again.” 

*

Justin’s second day at the diner is just as awful as his first. He drops ten plates, undercharges three customers, overcharges two, spills five cups worth of coffee, burns himself twice, burns the customers more, and he doesn’t say anything that isn’t I’m sorry, and Have a nice day, and What can I get you.

But he remembers to smile at the customers today.

Justin figures that has to count for something.

*

“So.” Ethan leans against the tree and smiles into the distance, all glowing eyes and emphatic gestures. “I told Dillon I’d try the cello if he tried the viola, and the way he looked. You’d think I asked him to try a wind instrument or something.” Ethan laughs.

Justin used to like his laugh. It isn’t obnoxious, but it’s from the belly, deep and bouncing and a tad raspy.

Justin really hates his laugh now.

He really fucking loathes Dillon Day.

“I’m working at the diner,” Justin says, with no apropos whatsoever. He takes a bite from his apple and tells himself that he’s only giving Ethan this information as a passing FYI.

His reaction is everything Justin thought it might be; Ethan’s dark eyebrows hiking up his forehead, lost behind his hair, eyes blinkblinkblinking fast and puzzled. “Serious?”

“Like a heart attack,” Justin says. “I’m only serving behind the counter for now, but who knows? It seems like I could get farther.”

Justin meets Ethan every Sunday afternoon, and if he’s being honest, he doesn’t really know why. He knows that Ethan asked him, “Can we still be friends,” and Justin knows that he said yes, of course he said yes. It wasn’t like Justin could blame him for leaving, for giving up, for throwing in the towel, for breaking a promise or ten.

Meeting him is nothing really, it's just the park across the street, a few wounds down. It wasn’t always like this. Back when they were together, they met in rooms, apartments and towers, something confined and private, not that it mattered, not that they ever did anything necessitating privacy.

“That’s—” and here’s Ethan’s jaw, the ticking of it, shifting tendon beneath delicate skin. He ducks his head and glances away. “Wow, that’s… really amazing.”

Justin can’t smother his grin as much as he’d like, and he promises, Justin swears to fucking god, that it’s not like that. He’s not making a dig or picking a scab or rubbing it in. It’s not like that. It’s not. “Ben said it’s an impressive show of progress.”

“Well, I’d say Ben’s a brilliant and observant man.” At least he manages to smile, and at least he manages to make it somewhat believable.

Justin wishes he could shut himself up. “Tomorrow’s my seventh day. I think I’m getting good, too. My tips are ridiculous and I haven’t even undercharged a customer in three—”

“What about the theater?”

Justin lifts a shoulder into something resembling a shrug. “Quit.”

“But,” and to Ethan’s credit, Justin can tell he tries really hard to hide his irritation. “I got you that job, Justin. You could have dropped me a line, or… something.” After a long moment of silence, “Did you at least leave on good terms?”

Justin laughs, “What do you think?”

“Justin,” Ethan sighs, and Justin, he hates that fucking sigh. In two seconds of expelled air, Ethan can say a lot. Mostly, he says Why can’t you have more tact.

“That guy is a sanctimonious, power hungry, homophobic twat,” and Justin thinks, How’s that for tact? “Maybe if I had a vagina and an insatiable kink for sucking off my asshole bosses ad infinitum, maybe then, we could have parted on good terms.” Justin adds, “But I really seriously doubt it.”

“That homophobic twat gave you a job when you really needed it.”

Justin scoffs, “Horseshit. He gave me a job because he could pay me under the table—so that he could give the taxes that could have been spent on the community to Stockwell’s campaign instead. Stop acting like he rescued me from the dregs of—”

Ethan stands up, “If you’re just going to be combative the whole time, then I’m—”

“I’m so proud of you, Justin,” Justin rolls his eyes, “Congratulations for making progress. I’m happy you fled a hostile work environment. Glad to see you not miserable for ten seconds.”

“It’s not like that,” Ethan insists. “I am proud of you. I’m ridiculously proud of you. I want you to be happy, more than anything. But.” There’s that sigh again. “I just wish you wouldn’t burn your bridges.”

Justin wishes sometimes that he’d burn more of them, torch them to the fucking ground and cover his skin in the ashes that fall, wear it like flesh and war paint.

He wishes he wouldn't come back next Sunday, even though he knows he will.

*

His mom comes into the diner, which wouldn’t be that bad if it weren’t for the fact that Deb is on her heels and Brian isn’t there, nowhere to be found, to act as any kind of buffer.

They fuss over Justin, fawn over him, watch him work and share glances and little whispers—or in Deb’s case, slightly less loud voices.

His mom says, “This is wonderful,” and Deb says, “This is fucking fantastic, kiddo,” and Justin isn’t really in the position to handle them, but he figures, well.

Deb is here, and she looks like shit, looks like she’s exhausted to the point of ridicule, and if Justin can make her smile like that then he won’t be the rainer of parades.

They don’t stay all day, just an hour or two, just long enough to see that Justin might be making progress, but it’s not what they think. It’s slow, minutes that feel like weeks, days that feel like years, lousy customers who hate his guts and bad coordination. He doesn’t know what he’s doing half the time, literally, will stand there with a glass of milk or a carafe of coffee and completely forget what he’s doing and why he’s doing it.

“It’s not a brain damage thing,” he promises them. “It’s just that I get overwhelmed, and I…”

Justin’s mom supposes, “You haven’t relearned that yet—how to absorb and manage.” She says, “I think you will, though.”

And if Deb decides to wait on a booth or four, then Justin’s not arguing, and when his mom asks him home for dinner the next night and Deb insists they merge their household family dinners at Casa Novotny, then he’s not saying no.

Sometimes, not often, but every now and again, in heavy moderation, Justin thinks it feels nice to be fussed over.

*

Brian doesn’t come all day.

Justin doesn’t care, except for how he kind of does. The bell on the door must ring every three-point-five seconds, and Justin’s neck is aching from the twist of it, the sharp glances over his shoulder or the quick peeks he takes when crouched behind the counter.

He hasn’t asked Brian how long he’s staying for.

*

Brian doesn’t come until midnight—in fact, just twenty minutes from the end of Justin’s shift—and he doesn’t look like he just came from Woody’s, Babylon, the alley on fifth, the baths.

He’s with Michael. Waving a hand in a vaguely dismissive gesture, Brian tells Justin, “Usual,” and elegantly folds himself into a booth.

He talks with Michael and they pull toward one another, over the table, and even from all the way behind the counter Justin can see Michael’s excited little grin and big owlish eyes.

Justin drops the plate of fries onto the counter and says, “Kinney.”

Brian barely spares him a look, but says, “Bring them.” And when Justin stands there glowering into the plate of greasy potatoes, Brian adds, “Your shift’s almost over. Come mingle, princess.”

Justin grabs the plate, lets it shake with his wrist and considers the shape of it, how similar it might be to a Frisbee, and how satisfying Brian might look covered in grease and ketchup. He imagines letting it fall and bending down to clean the jagged, slippery shards it leaves.

Just then, Brian looks at him, makes a big show of pressing himself to the wall, showcasing with a gesture to the Justin-sized space at his side.

Justin grits his teeth and rolls a shoulder, regards the couple loitering on the floor and the man in the back talking on his cell phone.

He takes Brian his fries.

“Don’t you want my order?” Michael asks when Justin drops into the booth.

He tries a smile. “Not really, no,” and Michael rolls his eyes, whines about shitty service and doesn’t seem nearly as fazed about it as he’d have Justin believe.

“Our little Mikey’s going to be an entrepreneur,” Brian says.

He touches Justin’s knee.

Justin’s nails dig into his palm, his thigh, his arm, his wrist, whatever is closest and fleshy and he lets his hair fall over his eyes. He ducks his head and shakes harder when Brian squeezes, rubs at the curve of it, tugs Justin closer and closer, until he’s pressed to Brian’s side, until he’s breathing hard but he isn’t fighting.

Michael very carefully doesn’t pay attention to this. “It’s just an idea. There’s no way I could ever afford it.”

Brian tells Michael, “Isn’t there?” and while they bicker over whether or not it might be appropriate to accept financial investments from your wealthy bachelor friends, Justin adjusts to the feel of Brian’s arm around his shoulder, inhales the scent of him, exhales and has no fucking idea what they’re talking about.

“What are you talking about?”

“The old comic store,” Michael explains. “Which I probably wouldn’t even have the time to manage.”

Brian says, “You could if you quit that piss poor excuse of a job you have now,” and Justin doesn’t care about this, couldn’t if he tried.

He takes the hand that Brian’s thrown over his shoulder and peers at it, shifts it from side to side close to his face so he can inspect the wrinkles of his knuckles, the soft lines of his palm, the gentle curve of his wrist, the manicured edges of his fingernails.

Justin decides that skin is very odd.

Before he can figure out why that is, there’s Ethan, but before there’s Ethan, there’s the bell on the door and footsteps that Justin doesn’t turn to regard at all, not until they pass his booth and pause. Not until the footsteps are right at their side.

“Justin?” Ethan has known for three days that Justin’s been working here, and it makes sense, Justin supposes, that Ethan would choose this day, this shift, this exact hour and minute to finally come see him.

It’s not that he’s been out. Ethan’s dressed very casually, you see, so it’s not like he’s coming for a post-Babylon snack—no siree bob, such classless primal displays of social gyration are below violinists of his caliber.

It’s just that thing, see—that thing with karma and it being such a terrible bitch.

Justin doesn’t pull Brian closer, except for how he kind of does. “Hey, I didn’t see you there,” and of course Justin didn’t, couldn’t have really, because for all intents and purposes, he was too busy holding Brian’s hand. “You’ve met Michael, right?”

They both nod, and if Ethan were staring at Brian any harder, then his eyeballs would escape his face and slither the length of his crisp Armani. “I don’t think we’ve met, though.” He doesn’t even make an effort, just grinds it out, lets his jaw work this way and that, pings his gaze to and fro.

Justin says, “This is…” and he bends his neck to look at Brian, to absorb the uninterested slant of his lips, and he pleads, fucking begs Brian, offers his firstborn and the blood of many virgins, sacrifices proverbial goats at Brian’s candlelit alter. “This is Brian.” Justin says, “Brian, this is Ethan. He’s a violinist. World class.”

Brian’s hand twitches against Justin’s shoulder, but then it’s curling over the bone there, and it’s like a click, a flash, a Kodak moment. Brian looks at Ethan and grins. “Well, fuck me with a xylophone, you don’t say.”

Justin nods and he does, he does say, he says very much. “He just got back from tour.”

“That’s interesting. Mikey, is that not interesting?”

Michael slowly agrees, “I… guess?”

Ethan’s voice says, “It’s decidedly less exciting than you’d think,” but his eyes are full of, What the fuck, and, How, and, Why, and the best of it is when he says, out loud, “When did this happen?”

Justin doesn’t know what he means, thinks he might be confusing Brian for a boyfriend. He doesn’t ask for clarification. “Two weeks ago?” He looks at Brian and decides, “Yeah, two weeks ago.”

“That’s… wow, I mean. Good. Good for you.”

Michael mutters something resembling, “…awkward,” and Brian doesn’t miss a beat.

“I do my best to make it good for him.” Brian tongues the inside of his cheek and lets his hand sneak beneath Justin’s collar, just a fingertip, maybe three. He might also be laughing in his own quiet, Brian’ish way.

“That’s… nice.” Ethan clears his throat and looks at the counter, pushes his fists into his jacket. “Well, I just wanted to come say hi, and. You know. See how you were doing, which. Is clearly good.”

Brian says, “Clearly,” and Justin says, “Good,” and he thinks if he looks hard enough, he can see the bright silhouette of a bridge go up in flames, angry and bright, claiming and final and sure.

Ethan says, “Good,” and Brian says, “Great,” and Michael says, “Fantastic, I’m going to get some fucking food.”

He waits until Ethan’s gone, until his footsteps retreat at his back and he hears the bell, can imagine the sound of his feet against cement, gravel, the sharp edge of his frown and the comfort of having one Dillon Day on speed-dial.

Justin grabs Brian’s face and smashes their mouths together.

It’s the briefest of things, completely inelegant and hardly a kiss, since there isn’t any tongue at all and Justin’s too busy smiling, fucking beaming at Brian to really make an effort. “That was totally worth knowing he fucked that cello player in my bed.”

Brian laughs, half follows Justin’s mouth when he pulls away, swipes a fry from Brian’s plate and uses his teeth to rip it in half.

He says to Justin, “You’re kind of a tease. And using me. It’s offensive and I approve.”

“Really?”

“We could fuck in his bed.”

Justin pretends to wonder, “What about the cello player?” and Brian wrinkles his nose.

“Well I could fuck him, too, but I don’t even know what he looks like. I have standards.”

“Not very many,” Michael says upon his return. He digs into his tuna melt and tells Brian, “You’re offering to invest in a comic shop—a failing comic shop—in this economic climate—”

Justin doesn’t care, couldn’t if he tried. Instead, he goes back to examining Brian’s hand, and he doesn’t have ashes to dance in and he isn’t wearing war paint, but he’s got the taste of Brian on his lips and no plans for Sunday afternoon.

Justin supposes that’s the next best thing.

*

“When are you leaving?” When Justin finally asks, they’re walking down Liberty at its peak hour.

Brian is wrapped around him, shields Justin from the passersby who could care less about the blond, shaggy-haired kid that looks one second and a careless elbow away from vomiting all over their shoes. “Sick of me so soon?”

Justin cringes into him when a burly man passes, lets his feet falter and re-adopt Brian’s slow rhythm. “Sick of waiting for you to leave, yeah.” But he hip-checks Brian so that he’ll know, Justin can handle it.

Brian shrugs, but doesn’t evade. “Don’t know.” And he answers as if maybe he’s seen this question coming from blocks away, “Soon, probably.”

Justin swallows when a particularly large group nears them, parrots, “Soon,” and rolls it around on his tongue, tastes the shape and bitter tang of it, and just because he can handle it doesn’t mean he has to like it.

“Vacation days are finite.”

“I imagine you’ll be happy to get back to your life of… scarce responsibility and indiscriminate lays,” and Justin doesn’t know how he manages a genuine smile, but there it is. 

Brian’s eyes cut to the side, flick sharply to Justin through the edges of his sunglasses. “Ecstatic.”

“Glad to hear it.”

“You sound like it,” Brian deadpans. “It’s the way you’re strangling my wrist. Very convincing.”

“I’m strangling your wrist because—” They dodge some prick on a skateboard, and Justin fights a shudder. “—I hate being out here.”

“Now now, sonny boy, you made it all the way to the end of Liberty without vomiting on me. It’s practically a success story compared to yesterday.”

“I said I was sorry.”

“And I will never get the smell of Pink Plate out of those pants.” Since they’ve made it to the car, Brian opens the door, lets Justin dive inside and close his eyes, gulp in air and swallow down bile.

Brian starts the car and Justin rubs some of the tension from his hand, jabs his fingertips into the muscle and lets his nails bite into the skin.

“Just tell me, okay?” Justin asks, “Before you go?”

Brian lights a cigarette and says, “Why wouldn’t I?” and Justin shrugs.

“I don’t remember you leaving, the first time,” Justin says without knowing why, but when only a heavy silence follows, he explains, “When I woke up, I lost like a whole month, and I didn’t know you’d left. I just… you know, like, forgot it.”

If Brian reacts to this at all, it doesn’t show beyond a flick of grey cigarette ash and a tilt of his head.

Justin says, “I actually kept forgetting it. After I came home, when it was bad, I went to the loft looking for you a few times. Felt like a moron.”

Brian says nothing.

“Some of it came back to me eventually. It’s not like the data was erased, it was just out of order, and. I kept forgetting.” Justin looks at Brian and says, “I kept forgetting you left.”

Brain turns a sharp corner and curls his lips into his mouth, body leaning with the motion.

Justin sighs and feels the wall that’s there now, can finger the edges of it in the dark, and he could search for a doorway or a corner, but he’s been there, done that, knows exactly how it ends.

Justin watches the road and says more to himself than Brian, “I must have forgotten a hundred times.”

What Justin’s trying to say, sort of struggling to really, is that he must have been reminded a hundred times, and he was bad at it at first, all wet eyes and lumpy throat and clenched teeth, and maybe it was bad, a new punch to the gut every single day, maybe there were shredded photographs, but they were always taped back together three ways to Sunday when all was said and done.

Justin got better at it, with time. Just like the diner, like how he can sometimes venture from behind the counter to take orders, or like how when Brian touches Justin now, it’s less of a car-crash-level battle and more of a grudging skirmish.

He’s memorized Brian leaving like no one ever has or ever will, and he can’t exactly handle Liberty Avenue, but this?

This he's got down to a science. “You should tell me, when you go,” Justin decides.

*

Brian doesn’t leave that day, and he doesn’t leave the next, or the next, or the next.

Justin works the noon shifts and waits on the booths when he feels daring, and after, he cringes at Brian’s side when they walk down Liberty for an hour. He goes home and eats whatever Sal sends home with him, usually a Pink Plate. He shoves a chair under his doorknob before he goes to sleep and when he wakes up, he’s yanking futilely at it, rattling the frame. He watches TV until he dozes off, wakes up, gets dressed, and takes enough medication to incapacitate a small elephant.

Wash, rinse, repeat as desired.

Justin wonders just how finite vacation days are.  

*

Brian shows up at his door Friday night and looks grumpy. Justin can tell because Brian has these lines around his mouth that turn into temporary wrinkles when he frowns too much. There’s also the telltale fact that he greets Justin like this:

“Emmett wants us to go to Woody’s and I don’t want your fucking attitude about it.”

Justin looks around his studio apartment and offers a shrug. “Alright.”

Brian doesn’t seem surprised or pleased with Justin’s easy disposition at all, just grunts, “Peachy.”

So that’s how they end up at Emmett’s place, because, for one, he misses that flaming nelly motherfucker and doesn’t haven’t any qualms with saying so, and for two, Justin’s ‘going out to Woody’s’ clothes consist mainly of cargo pants, khakis, and hooded sweatshirts, which he doesn’t think he looks bad in, until he’s standing next to Brian Kinney of course.

Emmett holds up a shirt and Hmm’s. “Honey, if you don’t get some sun soon, I’m going to have to start putting you in pastels, which I’m not opposed to, as a rule, but it’s not your thing.” He frowns at the shirt in his hands, flings it aside. “Black seems… safe,” he decides.

Brian, who’s sitting on the sofa and flipping through Men’s Health without even seeming to see the pages says, “Since when does the big nelly queen go with ‘safe’?”

Justin really wishes he hadn’t.

Emmett recovers quickly enough. “Since I’m trying to get this one L-A-I-D laid.”

An unexpected laugh bursts from Justin’s lips. “You’re aiming high, Em. Loss of gravity levels of high.”

“But,” Emmett gives an optimistic grin, tosses him a shirt that is in no way appropriate for the weather. “It’s clearly not impossible like we all previously assumed.” He waggles his fingers. “There are all a manner of newfound possibilities.”

Justin argues, “Not really,” and pulls the stupidly low cut tank over his chest. He smoothes it down the front and doesn’t check himself in the mirror, instead turns to Brian with a curve in his brow.

Brian tells the magazine, “You’re going to freeze your nipples off in that thing.”

Justin slides into his jacket and tells Emmett, “It’s not just about that. I can’t… I mean, it’s not like I can just,” Justin gestures to himself, putting a little more emphasis on his crotch. “Do it. Like everything else. I don’t know how yet.”

Emmett crosses his legs, folds his hands into his lap and explains, “You see, when two people really like each other’s asses…”

“I know how to have sex, Em.”

“It’s true,” Brian sighs, bored, but doesn’t look up from the magazine.  “He passed the pop quiz and everything.”

Justin ignores Brian and says, “It’s just different now. I don’t know how to, like. Well, process it. Not like I used to. Everything’s wired different. Or, that’s what they tell me.”

“Oh sweet baby Jesus,” Emmett gasps. “Please tell me they didn’t turn my Dollface into a dirty yucky breeder.”

Justin assures, “Johnny Depp still gets me perfectly hard. It’s just that…” Justin scratches his temple and really wishes they weren’t having this conversation. “I can’t really do much with it. You know. After that.”

Brian finally drops the magazine, looks at Justin and says, “Can’t do much with it?”

Emmett folds a shirt and hums under his breath, “Tried to tell you, but does anyone listen to Em? Oh no…”

Brian asks, “What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”

“It just,” and Justin really hopes his face isn’t nearly as red as it feels. “It doesn’t feel the same. It’s hard to… you know.”

Really, really wishes they weren’t having this conversation.

“If I knew,” Brian says, “I wouldn’t be asking.”

Justin deadpans, “It’s hard to come.”

“Well, young man,” Brian gapes at him, shoves a finger at the bathroom. “You go in there and beat that thing until you get it right.”

Emmett giggles, “Use or lose it.”

Brian agrees, “Drill it or kill it.”

“Bob it or rob it?”

“Stroke it or croak it.”

“Rub it or snub it.”

“Slick it or kick it.”

They’d probably come up with more if they weren’t both laughing so hard.

Justin spares them a glower, but finds the nearest pillow and hurls it at Brian, which is basically pointless, since he just catches it, curls against it and laughs harder.

“What is this, erotic Dr. Seuss?”

Brian quiets enough to raise his eyebrows. “The Grinch Who Stole Orgasms.”

Emmett muses, “Hop on Pop could be way more interesting.”

Justin steps into his shoes and grumbles, “I’m so glad my crippling psychological issues entertain you.”

“Oh come on now.” Brian bites his lip and offers as brightly as Brian Kinney could, “I can give you a hand job?”

“Fuck you.”

Brian throws an arm across Justin’s shoulder when they leave apartment, tells him, “Have to learn to crawl before you learn to walk, sonny boy,” and it takes Justin some time to adjust to all the skin and warmth and firmness and touch, but with every try it’s less and less.

*

Woody’s is just like Justin remembers it, simply smaller and darker, more crowded. In his mind, it’s bright and sprawling, warmth and laughter, softened by the downy sepia of nostalgia, perhaps. Now it’s just dull bar lamps, wood grain and noisy beads, humid and musky men with arms as long as branches.

Brian’s setting up a shot on the pool table when Justin asks, “Isn’t it weird how things are always bigger in your memory?”

Justin has also had two Rum and Cokes, a Xanex, and half of an anti-convulsant, which probably puts him in a class of post-drunk. Emmett’s been at the bar long enough that Justin hasn’t had to hear, “Should you really be drinking?” for a whole twenty minutes, so they have the billiard niche all to themselves. 

Brian sinks the five-ball and says, “I’ve never gotten that complaint.”

Justin watches him chalk the tip of his cue and wonders, “Do you ever have a thought that isn’t phallic?”

Brian looks at him like, Come on.

“Right, good point,” Justin concedes, “I just mean that Woody’s seemed a lot more fun in my memories.”

“That’s because you’re not doing anything.” Brian tosses his cue stick onto the table. “I can’t get cruised over here. Come on, we’ll dance.”

Justin takes Brian’s hand and only feels the faintest urge to yank it away. Mostly, he feels confused, so he tells Brian, “I’m confused.” There are four things in Woody’s that go thumpa-thumpa, and they’re all bathroom stalls. “This isn’t dancey music.”

Brian says, “So?” and since this sounds to Justin like the perfect explanation, he smiles at him.

“But I can’t let the branches get me, ‘kay?” He grabs Brian’s shirt. “‘Kay, Bri?”

Brian says, “You’re drunk,” and Justin grins.

“I’m fine, s’good.”

“I’m not buying you more.”

Justin smiles bigger, and they probably just passed ten people, but he doesn’t feel much of anything. “Don’t have to. I’m a legal adult. Twenty one.”

Brian pauses at this, blinks at Justin before he decides, “Right,” and pulls him into his chest, arms resting on his shoulders. Their foreheads touch and Brian says, “Forgot.”

“I used to forget things,” Justin whispers, like a secret he’s keeping safe, trading from one sweaty hand to another, covert and very special. “All the time.”

Brian asks, “Like how to dance?” but his eyes flash and his jaw is rigid and Justin realizes his hips aren’t moving, so he does this, and he hasn’t danced since before his last dance, so he’s quite pleased to learn that, thank you very much, he hasn’t forgotten that.

It’s not really like it used to be. Justin remembers how they used to dance, pelvis-to-pelvis, breathing each other’s air, and that’s the same, but the setting, the atmosphere, Justin, is so different. There’s isn’t confetti or synth’y drum beats, and there aren’t any halos, not like in Babylon when the strobes would catch on Brian’s hair and damp skin, make him shine and glitter.

When they danced, back then, Justin remembers it very distinctly, how they used to explode—detonate—into a million different sparkling particles until they all fused together into one indistinguishable beam.

Justin remembers them going supernova.

Now it’s all eyes and heat, slow grinding, hipbones and Brian’s damp collar, the fleshiness of his lips, and the tickle of his hair against Justin’s temple.

It only takes the smallest shift to press their mouths together, and Justin doesn’t know who does it, but he licks at the seam of Brian’s lips and tastes whiskey, tangy and sweet and shiny, and Justin remembers this dance, too.

His hips stop moving.

He grabs a handful of Brian’s hair and pushes his tongue into his mouth, presses inside and breathes hard against his cheek when Brian pushes back, all gritty-soft tongue and hard teeth. Then it’s just warm, warm and wet and aching chest, just above the belly, deep in his gut, and maybe just a bit angry. Justin kisses hard, like a freight train, bruising and sloppy, sucks at his tongue and pulls his hair, fists his shirt, lets it tremble.

They separate with a dirty smack and Brian looks at him with his swollen smirk and dark eyes and says to Justin, rough-voiced, “We’re getting cruised.”

Justin follows Brian’s eyes and sees the man there, in his tight jeans and band tee, watches him watch them as he fellates the neck of his beer bottle, tongues the rim.

Justin turns to Brian and clarifies, “You interrupted the hottest kiss of my life to tell me someone else I can’t have is interested in fucking the person I actually want.” He dully decides, “Excuse me while I jump for joy.”

Brian stares at him, blank-faced, as Justin pushes him away. He walks back to their pool table, but a group of raucous queers have already taken it over, so he decides to give the bar a try, because he’s suddenly far too sober.

Before he can get there, though, Brian’s hand is on his arm, steering him left and left and left until there’s nothing but wall and his body pressed to Justin’s, all hardness and steely eyes, and then lips and mouth and tongue.

He kisses Justin, fucks his tongue into his mouth and shoves their hips together, doesn’t cradle Justin’s jaw so much as he guides it, one way and then the other, makes his face hurt from all the bone and teeth and smashing cartilage, and Justin takes it back.

This is the hottest kiss of his life.

He makes a sound into Brian’s mouth, this soft and needy thing from the back of his throat, wraps an arm around his neck, keeps him close and grabs frantically at fabric and skin. Brian works a hand down between them, presses a hot, open palm to the front of Justin’s jeans.

The cry Justin makes is sharp and sort of strangled. He grabs Brian’s shoulders and pries their faces apart, hits his head on the wall when he rears back and tries, he really tries, and not like he does everything else, but really, he gives it top priority. Justin swears to deities he’s never known that he’ll do anything, anything, if he can just not push Brian’s hand away, if he can just feel ice instead of fire when Brian strokes him through his rough denim, from top to bottom, grabbing and pressing.

Brian sucks a bruise into his neck and Justin gnashes his teeth together, shakes from the force of his own resolve and squeezes his eyes shut, holds his breath and wills it to be fine, wants to feel it, he does, he does, he does.

Justin growls from the pit of his chest when he shoves Brian’s hand away. He puffs, “Can’t.”

Brian presses his forehead to Justin’s temple and says, “I know,” but then he pushes away, tugs Justin by a belt loop and spins himself until he’s behind him, chest pressed to his back. He grabs Justin’s chin and turns it, pivots his neck a few inches this way. He tells him, “See that guy? I’m taking him back to my hotel, and I’m going to fuck his brains out.”

Justin thinks he was wrong before about anything being different from back then. He tries to walk away, but Brian pins him to his chest, and when he speaks again, his voice is hard, hot against his ear.

“Listen. Are you listening?” Justin doesn’t answer. “I’m going to fuck him,” Brian breathes, lips dragging over the shell of his ear, “and you’re going to watch. You’re going to put your hand in your pants and fuck it until you come for me.”

Justin sucks in a breath, curls his fingers around the arm that Brian’s got across his chest.

He looks at the trick, and somewhere, buried in his mind and too faint for him to be sure, Justin thinks he can hear the ticking of a clock.

Softly, Brian adds, “If you want to,” and presses a kiss to Justin’s ear, lets his arm fall away.

The clock ticks, Soon, soon, soon.

*

Brian even having a hotel room is ridiculous. Justin knows he could have stayed just about anywhere; Linday’s, Deb’s, Mikey’s, etc. But he supposes if he had, then he couldn’t have pushed the trick through the door and pulled Justin behind him, like he’s doing now.

There are some things Justin doesn’t ever want to have to explain.

Luckily, for Liberty boys, this is the kind of thing that apparently no one bats an eyelash at. “He’s watching,” Brian says, and Trick says, “Cool,” and takes off his shirt. He presses against Brian, goes to push their mouths together, but gets a hand to his chest.

“No kissing,” he tells him, and Trick shrugs, gets on his knees.

Justin inspects the room while this is happening, shucks his jacket and considers the best vantage point. He ultimately opts for the arm chair near the window, drops into it and kicks off his shoes, tests the cushion’s bounce.

When he looks back up, the guy’s giving him head.

Brian, who’s in the middle of taking off his shirt, throws his head back and looks down his nose at Justin. “Comfortable?”

Justin hums, “Mhm,” and watches the slowly revealed expanse of Brian’s chest more than the guy’s head.

The truth is, Justin’s always thought that watching another guy get head is sort of terribly boring. If he’s not giving it or getting it, Justin could honestly care less, always skips those parts of porn, and he doesn’t know, maybe Brian senses this, or maybe he remembers it from back then, because he grabs the guy by the neck and nudges him up.

He tells him, “Strip,” and steps out of his pants, pushes him to the bed once he has. They land with a bounce and Trick is sucking Brian’s neck, spreading his legs and rubbing against him. Brian looks at Justin and says, “Well?”

Justin drops his eyes to his lap, sees the bulge against the zipper and pulls his lip between his teeth. He sighs and presses his palm to it, undoes his pants and shoves his hand into them, fists himself and watches Brian do the same to Trick. He matches the rhythm of his hand, holds his gaze and falls back into the chair when their motions synch.

Brian rolls the guy over and mouths at his shoulder, but he’s looking at Justin, even when he fingers him, slow and deep, even when the guy moans out and Brian grabs his hips, settles them high and rubs himself into the crevice of his ass. Justin tries to keep his rhythm, even though his toes curl and his jaw clenches and he wants to cringe more than he wants to not.

Brian asks, “Feel good?” and the trick groans, “Fuck yes,” and Brian rolls his eyes. “I meant him.”

Justin laughs into the wing of the armchair, but breathes, “Yeah.” He’s only half lying.

He told Emmett once—talked to Ethan about it more—about how this, for Justin, is like ice. Like for that split second when ice touches your skin, it’s hard to tell if it’s hot or cold, only with this, it’s pain and pleasure and the split second is suspended into minutes, the length of time it takes his hand to spasm.

When Brian finally pushes into the guy, Justin has to stop, squeeze himself and close his eyes, dig his nails into his thigh and hold his breath.

Brian grunts, “Relax,” and the guy gasps, “Getting there,” and Brian rolls his eyes, thrusts until their skin smacks together. “I meant him.”

Justin squirms in his seat and exhales, lets his eyes crack open just enough to match Brian’s rhythm again, feels his toes curl and his chest tighten. Brian leans forward, curves over the guy until his mouth is against his shoulder, tells Justin, “Look at me,” and the trick isn’t even pretending anymore that Brian might be talking to him.

Justin holds his gaze and tries, he does, even when he starts sweating and his arm shakes, even when Brian’s hips quicken, even when it turns brutal, he matches him with his fist and bites into the pillowy part of his palm to endure the pleasure-pain of it, watches Brian’s eyes get heavy and dark.

The guy spits, “Yeah, fuck me,” and Brian covers his mouth with his hand.

He grunts at Justin, “Come on, come on,” and Justin’s panting and pushing his hips into his hand and he feels a little raw, too tender, and his jaw hurts from clenching his teeth, but he looks at Brian’s eyes and whimpers at him, and he feels like he might be close, he might be, if he can just, a little longer, a little faster.

Justin’s hand gives out just then, spasms uncontrollably and will absolutely not do anything Justin wants it to.

He tries alternating with his left, but only halfheartedly. His hair feels damp and sticky and his lungs burn, his thighs ache, his arm hurts, and he just rests against the chair, catches his breath and distantly hears Brian finishing the guy off with a clap of wet flesh and strangled grunts.

When they both collapse into a tangled heap of sweaty heaving flesh and corded muscle, Justin escapes to the bathroom where he wills his erection down enough to manage a piss. After, he tries massaging some motor skill back into his hand, but knows from experience it’s a lost cause until further notice.

When he steps back out, the guy is gone and Brian is sprawled out under the sheets, smoking a cigarette. “Pop quiz,” Brian says, “did you get off?”

Justin lies, “Yeah,” and Brian lets a mouthful of smoke bleed slowly into the air.

He exhales. “That's an F, you're lying.”

“Yeah.” Justin shrugs. “But thanks for trying, anyway.”

“Well,” Brian pushes the cigarette into an ashtray and says, “I’m not getting up to drive you home.”

He pulls back the covers, pats the space beside him.

Justin takes his pants off and pulls his shirt over his head, stumbles to the bed and doesn’t really think twice about it. Their ankles rub together and Brian reaches for his hand, presses the tips of his fingers into the muscle and works it, gentle but firm. Justin kisses him, pretty much because he can, and tastes the sharp edge of tobacco and sex and whiskey residue.

Brian palms his ass and touches his face, and it’s not urgent, but Justin ruts against his hip and feeds him lazy, noncommittal groans. They fall asleep somewhere in the middle of it, tangled and slack-jawed against the same pillow.

*

That night, Justin dreams of touch, of explosions and glowing rooms, the tickle of soft whispers and enormous eyes, fingertips and ice touching skin. He dreams of brilliant supernovas, and the clock might still be ticking, but he honestly can’t hear it over the sound of his heartbeat, stomping in his ears.

When he wakes up hours later, his briefs are sticky and damp and he's still next to Brian.

*

The thing is, before Brian came back, Justin didn’t remember his last kiss. He doesn’t remember the last person he fucked, and he doesn’t remember the last time he blew someone, or got blown by someone, or the last time he held someone’s hand, or the last time he was hugged.

He hasn’t thought about it in a long time. It’s been forever since he lay in bed at night, staring at the ceiling and telling himself that all those things, all those lasts, were maybe Brian, maybe.

When Brian wakes up, he touches the headboard and stretches like a cat, purrs in the back of his throat, bones creaky and popping. His eyes blink open in slow-motion, squinted and crinkled at the edges, and he scratches his chest, presses an ear to his shoulder and lifts the sheet that’s covering his body.

In a rumbly sleep-voice, he asks Justin, “Is this your way of asking for breakfast?”

He falls from Justin’s mouth with a slick pop. “This is breakfast,” he tells him, smirking at Brian through his lashes while his hand absentmindedly strokes the length of him.

He figures he probably doesn’t have much more time with Brian, and for Justin, at least this is one ‘last’ he’ll never have to wonder about again.

Brian lights a cigarette, rubs at his chest until he scratches at his stomach, which is when his fingers tangle into Justin’s hair, warm weight against his skull, not pressing, just feeling. Brian exhales a lungful of smoke and sighs, “Well, don’t let it get cold.”

Justin puffs a laugh, takes him back into his mouth and works his tongue, sucks a little harder and pushes a little deeper, touches the soft sac of skin between his legs and swallows around him, twists his face like a bottle cap. Brian forgets his cigarette moments later, lets it slowly burn to ash as he cradles Justin’s jaw, flings the sheets aside and watches him with sleep-swollen eyes, brows knit together.

Brian thumbs the hollow of Justin’s cheek when he comes. He gasps at the ceiling, toes curled, and his taste hasn’t changed, is still fleshy and tang and Brian.

He tells Justin, “And to think, I almost forgot your version of ‘good morning’,” and grins to himself when he lights another cigarette.

Justin rests his head on Brian’s stomach and isn’t bothered at the mention of the past. “I came,” he says, fingers the downy trail of hair below Brian’s bellybutton. “Last night, while I was sleeping.”

Brian’s chest jumps with a silent laugh. “You had a wet dream?”

“Haven’t had one of those in forever.” He lets his eyes fall closed when Brian cards through his hair, inhales his secondhand smoke and confides, “Haven’t had anything but nightmares for years. S’nice.”

Brian hums.

“That’s what happened to my face that time.” He’s basically half asleep again when he tells Brian about that night in the hall of his building, even as Brian’s finger falter, slow until they’re still, just tangled there against his scalp. He pauses every now and then to hear Brian’s stomach grumble and gurgle below his ear, finishes with, “Anyway.”

Brian says, “Sleepwalking is dangerous,” and Justin gives him a dismissive wave.

“Just lock myself in now. S’not serious.”

Brian’s chest expands with a sigh, and when he speaks again, it’s louder, more exact and not sharp, but serrated in a particular way. He tells Justin, “I’m not your doctor,” and Justin blinks his eyes open, peers up at him and says, “Good, I’m not your patient.”

Brian looks away and rolls from beneath him, puts his feet on the floor and reaches for his pants.

Justin asks, “Right?” and doesn’t want to know the answer, all but covers his ears while he watches Brian’s back.

“Real boys need real breakfasts,” is what he says, throws Justin his jeans and disappears into the bathroom.

*

He rides with Emmett to Deb’s for Sunday dinner.

The night before, Justin had tried to recreate what happened in Brian’s hotel room.  He masturbated until his muscles hurt and his hand locked up, and he didn’t wake up wet and sticky; he woke up in his usual fashion, only with the added bonus of blue balls and a bum hand.

Justin isn’t in the best of moods.

He sits on the stairs and watches the group in the living room from that vantage, not because he has to but because he prefers it. They’re still expecting his mother, and if Brian showed up on time for anything, everyone’s head would explode, so mostly it’s just the usual suspects; Lindsay, Michael and Ben, Emmett and Justin, Debbie and…

Well, just Debbie.

She says to him, “Heard you’re doing drop fuckin’ dead fantastic at the diner, kiddo.”

Justin shrugs, picks at the fray of his sweater sleeve. “It’s alright.”

No one else bothers, maybe senses that Justin kind of wants to be left alone, when the reality is, he doesn’t. He’s watching the door for Brian like a hawk, has grand, stealthy plans to steal away with him upstairs and shove his fucking tongue down his throat at the earliest available convenience.

When Emmett reluctantly joins him on the step, Justin is gnawing on a thumbnail, knee bouncing impatiently. “You’re awful quiet,” he notes.

Justin says, “I’m always quiet,” and Emmett argues, “Not recently,” and Justin explains, “I’m waiting for Brian to get here so I can blow him.”

Emmett says, “Well okie dokie then!” and Justin nods, continues chewing his nail and watching the door.

Emmett laces his hands around his crossed knees and, after a moment, wonders, “So you and Brian.”

“Me,” Justin clarifies, “blowing Brian. It’s not a handfasting.”

“Sweetie,” and Emmett pauses. “Never mind.”

 “What?”

He waves him off. “It’s nothing.”

Justin turns to him and scowls. “Well now I have to know.”

“Pretend I didn’t say anything.”

“It’s going to bother me.”

“Dollface.”

“All week, the rest of my life maybe.”

“It’s not important.”

“On my deathbed,” Justin laments, “I’ll be wondering, ‘what was that thing Em never told me’? And then I’ll die, unfulfilled and—”

“Oh Jesus Mary and Joseph, fine!” Emmett purses his lips and rolls his eyes, takes a breath and Justin leans closer to hear him, listens raptly.

The front door opens.

Justin shoots up, brightly tells Em, “Oh well, maybe next time!” and then there’s just Brian and his saunter. Justin lunges forward with all intentions of grabbing him by the dick and tugging him up the stairs, burying his face into his lap and reacquainting himself with his deep-throat technique, but then—

Well, then there’s Ted.

Justin’s feet hit the landing with a flat plunk.

They stand side-by-side, the two of them, and it’s so weird. Justin hasn’t seen Ted in almost a year, and back then, he looked pretty bad.

So when Justin thinks he looks fucking terrible, that’s saying quite a lot.

Brian removes his sunglasses and looks at Justin before his eyes rise, just over his shoulder and a little to his right.

Emmett drops two steps until he’s next to Justin, and Justin, he knows that look on Emmett’s face right now, the flat line of his lips and the steadiness of his gaze, remembers being right here a month ago, inspected and pitied and feeling so alone, so tangible an ache, that he couldn’t even bring himself to acknowledge it.

Justin doesn’t realize he’s grabbing Emmett’s hand until he does.

Their palms fit together like puzzle pieces, snug knuckles and fastened fingers, and Justin thinks that, right then, no two people know each other better. It might not be them against the world, but it’s them against something scarier, something cold and hard and disappointment and death and failure and dark and unfair and maybe love exists, maybe it does, but Justin can’t feel it like he used to, and this is why.

If Justin’s brain is sending some signal, some urgent command to put distance between their skin, then the rest of Justin isn’t listening.

Ted says, “Emmett.”

Emmett clutches Justin’s hand until it stings, says Ted’s name in a voice that sounds unfamiliar and void of all life.

He won’t even look him in the eye. “How are things?”

Emmett says, “Better now,” and Ted doesn’t react at all.

“Good to hear.”

“I’m sure.”

Ted clears his throat and turns away, greets the others and looks pale as a sheet, twitchy and red-eyed, and Justin feels this seed of anger planted into his chest, matches Emmett’s grip to stop himself from lunging for Ted’s throat and ripping it out.

Justin glances at Brian and tugs Emmett along to the kitchen, lets him sit at his side and keep their hands pressed together, damp and warm.

He wants to punch Brian in the fucking face.

“Kiddo,” Deb says, “Your mom’s not here yet, we can’t eat now,” and Justin says, “Fuck it,” loads his plate full of potatoes and peas, a dinner roll and a slice of beef.

Deb shrugs, “Okay, fuck it,” and everyone takes their place, one by one, some warier than most.

Emmett looks like he might vomit.

Lindsey says, “So?” and folds her napkin into her lap, and Michael says, “So…” and then Ted says, “So.”

An eerie silence follows. The clink of forks against plates, gulps of water and shuffling feet, someone sniffing and Brian’s sigh. Justin doesn’t know how long it lasts, how long the tension builds until it’s so thick and heavy that every breath feels like a scream.

He gets halfway through his mound of mashed potatoes before this happens:

“If someone doesn’t say something,” Brian warns, “I’m going to leave.”

No one says anything.

“Okay, I’ll start.” Brian’s fork clatters to his plate. He wipes his mouth and begins, “You’re all weak, emotion-driven sacks of shit.”

The collective inhale that’s taken then must suck every ounce of oxygen from the room, eight different pairs of lungs stealing it all away in preparation of telling Brian where exactly to shove it, how deep and for how long.

They don’t get a chance.

“Let’s start with Deb,” Brian says, standing.

She tries, “The fuck is—”

“—who’s stepped into the diner exactly twice since Vic died, not to even mention her baffling ability to completely fuck up the only opportunity she’ll have to get dick in any near, logical future.”  At Debbie’s red-faced gawk, “Yeah, I know all about the five-oh and your ‘intimacy issues’, sweetheart.”

Mikey says, “Brian, stop it,” and Brian says, “And Mikey, can’t forget you, still living the Big Q dream, only now you’ve got some company for your misery, congratulations.”

“And Ted,” Brian gestures to him, and Ted ducks his head. “Not that it bears saying, but I don’t think I ever thanked you for dicking over my son. Hope you at least got fucked nice and proper before you tweaked your brains out.”

“Then Lindsay,” and her nostrils flare, eyes glaring daggers. “How long has it been since you left the house, exactly? And just so I’m clear, did that start before or after your happy lezzie marriage fell to shambles?”

“Emmett, the big nelly queen who fell in love and can't move past the fact that anyone has the capacity to become shitty excuses for human beings.”

“And well, then there’s Justin,” Brian says, “Our little Sunshine, the Budding Artiste, King of Babylon, can barely go out alone without hyperventilating. Doesn’t even bother to rehab his hand, hasn’t drawn so much as a stick figure in three years, and oh yeah. Can’t even jack himself off.”

Brian takes a pause, looks at Ben and says, “I don’t really know you.”

“It’s okay,” Ben says, “I’m good.”

Mikey says in a steely voice, “Is there a point to this, or did you just gather us all ‘round so you could criticize our choices and belittle us?”

“The point,” Brian says, “In case it’s not abundantly clear, is that you’re all so fucking complacent it makes me sick.”

Deb finally throws down her napkin and shoots to her feet, tells Brian, “Where the fuck do you get off—” but Brian drops into his seat, flicks his hand at her.

“I’ve answered this before; have Justin give you a summary later.”

Lindsay sets her jaw and says, “We do what we can with what we have.” And Deb, Mikey, give their fervent agreement. “Must be easy for you, I imagine. Never having to fight for anything you—”

“Fight?!” Brian leans forward, pushes his fist to the table and all but sneers at her. “You aren’t fighters. You don’t know anything about it. Vic fucking Grassi was a fighter. You people? I don’t know what the hell you are anymore, but it’s not that.”

At the mention of Vic, their eyes fall to their plates. Deb sinks to her seat and stares at the centerpiece, wrinkles her napkin into her fist.

“Where were you?”

It’s the quietest thing, barely a whisper, a hiss at best, but Brian’s eyes jump to his and Justin thinks his hand is shaking, only he can’t tell where his spasms begin and Emmett’s tremors end.

They’re giving each other bruises.

“Where were you,” Justin wonders, “when Mel left Lindsay here alone. When Michael got outted at work, or when Ted took that first hit of meth, or how about when Emmett had no place to go? He didn’t leave bed for days. Did you know that?” Justin’s hand trembles and he says, “Where were you when I—” and Brian looks away.

Justin yanks his hand from Emmett’s and uses it to fling his plate across the table. It hits Brian’s chest and flips, covers his front in cream-colored potatoes and murky gravy.

Justin hits the table and snaps, “You fucking look at me!”

Brian props his elbows on the table, folds his hands under his chin and looks at Justin, carefully blank.

Justin’s fist thumps the table and he wonders, “Where were you when I got my head bashed in, Brian? And where were you when I was lying in the hospital, in a coma, or when I finally woke up and couldn’t remember my own name, but could say yours with two variations of 'Where is' and 'I want'?”

Brian’s nostrils twitch and everyone’s staring back and forth at them, waiting.

He doesn’t answer.

Justin decides, “Oh, right. You were fucking your way through Manhattan, so. If it’s alright with you, I’d like to have dinner with my fellow complacent, emotion-driven sacks of shit, because we might not deal with our problems in the most perfect of ways, but at least we're actually here to help each other try.”

He drops back to his seat, and vaguely, Justin can feel the vein in his neck throb and pulse, and he thought that would be cathartic in a million different ways, but the sad truth of it is, it isn’t.

It still hurts.

Emmett puts a hand on his knee, gives it three pats and shovels a spoonful of peas into his mouth.

Everyone else, seemingly satisfied with this, follows. Deb asks someone to pass the fuckin’ rolls, Lindsay refills her glass, Ted bites into a piece of beef, and Ben shakes some salt over his plate.

Mikey, however, watches Brian push back from the table with a worried, furrowed forehead. He’s looking right at Brian, when he says, “He was here.”

Brian fists the napkin he used to swipe at the front of his jacket and throws it at Mikey’s chest, thrusts a finger at him. “Don’t.”

He looks at Justin. “He came, okay? The day after you got bashed,” and Brian warns, “Mikey,” but he steamrolls over him. “He was here for a week—”

Justin’s fork goes slack in his hand, just enough to bounce when it twitches. He turns his owlish eyes to Brian and says, “Huh?”

“Thanks for the dinner, Deb.” Brian gets halfway around the table before Justin is suddenly there, pushing a hand into his chest.

He asks, “What’s he talking about?” and knows that it can’t be true, is sure that he would have known. Wouldn’t he have known?

Brian puts a hand on his shoulder and smiles meanly. “I was here in spirit, Darling.”

Justin knows then, curls the hand on Brian’s chest into a fist of fabric to stop him from moving away. “Why did—? What happened? Why didn’t you say something, or…? Why didn’t anyone tell me?” But when he looks at the faces around the table, every one save for Mikey seems just as puzzled.

Justin begs, “Why didn’t you—” but he never gets a chance to finish because the door opens then, draws every eye at the table to the foyer where Jennifer Taylor juggles a casserole dish and her pocketbook.

She gives a breathless, breezy smile and says, “Hope I’m not too late!”

Justin blinks at her, looks at Brian and remembers her eyes that day of the funeral, all that fear and doubt written all over her face. He spits, “You have got to be fucking kidding me.”

Brian’s shoulders drop with a hard sigh that clicks his tongue, this soft and final sort of sound. He says matter-of-factly, “Well fuck,” and wrenches himself free.

Justin swallows against the bitter aftertaste of bile, presses a hand to his gut and feels it less like a punch and more like a wrecking ball, the crash and crumble of it, feels like everything he’s known has been maliciously flawed.

Brian passes a very baffled Jennifer and slams the door on his way out, rattles the windows.

Someone behind him says, “I’m lost,” possibly Ted, maybe Ben, and his mom says, “Did I miss something?”

Justin recovers enough to yank his jacket from the back of the chair, voice cracking when he tells her, “Yeah, you missed something really important, but I’m never going to tell you about it. Just, you know—” He shoves his arm into his jacket, watches her face fall. “—Sit silently by and watch you agonize over it for three fucking years. Par for the course, right?”

She starts, “Justin,” and his face is already wet when he spits, “I can't even fucking look at you right now.” 

He slams the door on his way out and feels some part of himself fracture, implode and reform into something foreign and wonderful and altogether ugly with could-have-been's.

*

The thing about Justin is that he’s still an artist in spirit, in his brain and in his soul. It will never fade with time. He still sees that spark that makes things interesting, that gives them life and makes them beautiful or makes them ugly.

One day, two years ago, Justin looked at himself in the mirror and didn’t recognize the person staring back. Getting rid of that mirror, on that day, was the easiest decision Justin’s ever made.

Chris Hobbes made Justin ugly.

The reason he breaks the mirror that’s in his apartment now, the one he bought down at the thrift store on Hillary Street two weeks ago, is because that ugliness isn’t staring back at him, not like before.

Brian Kinney makes Justin beautiful.

He didn’t ask for it, any more than he asked to be bashed. It just happened, is just a passing factoid in the Justin Taylor Life Guide. Ugliness happens, Justin has come to expect this, but beauty happens too and he forgot how it looked, how it felt and how his mind will mold it into bright colors and hard edges that Justin itches to capture, but can’t.

Justin realizes then that even the brightest of beauty can be flawed by ugliness, and that.

That is the grimmest realization to have.

He wishes he could take it back, be seventeen again and wonderfully naïve, or be nineteen again and delightfully apathetic, but this is what he has; a shattered mirror and a pillowcase to put it in.

“You sent him away, didn’t you?” 

Justin’s mother steps carefully over a chair, lets her eyes roam the room and her fingers touch her mouth. She says, “Justin.”

“What did you say to him,” Justin wonders, and he’s not angry anymore, came home and tore the paper from his walls, hurled his pills across the room and threw his coffee pot, kicked his T.V. until it dropped to the floor, thudded and rattled and remained in one dissatisfying piece, which is when he went for the table and chairs.

He feels very tired.

His mom sighs, straightens the chair and eases herself into it. Softly she says, “Nothing that wasn’t in some way true.” When Justin twists the pillowcase in his hand, wrings it until his hands smart, she adds, “Nothing that wasn’t in some ways not.”

He carefully commands, “Be. Specific.”

“I told him that you needed someone your own age.” Justin twists the pillowcase harder. “That you both want very different things, and that I was afraid he’d only ever let you down because of it. That if he’d said yes to you and been there that night—”

Justin’s eyes flash. “You can’t know that!”

“No.” She smiles sadly. “But it isn’t such a leap. For either of us, I gather.”

“So you found the most baseless doubts imaginable and just fanned the flames until he believed it?”

“It didn’t take very much effort,” she says, and Justin laughs then, this dark and sad and hopeless thing, spreads out the pillowcase and fingers the wrinkles. “I’m not proud of it, Justin. I’m a human like everyone else, and it was the most terrifying moment of my life. I was just trying to do what I thought was best.”

“What else,” he softly demands. “What other lies have you made to maintain some ridiculous illusion of perfect control?”

His mother says, “He calls,” and Justin can’t remember ever feeling so miserably young.

“When?”

“Often at first, every week. They’ve dropped off now to once every few months.”

“He asks about me?”

“No, not once,” she sighs. “He asks about the housing market and the elections. The current state of local affairs. Occasionally, we discuss oil prices.” She tells Justin, “I think, however, just because he doesn’t say the words doesn’t mean he isn’t asking.”

“What do you tell him?”

“The good things.”

Justin looks around his studio, absorbs the overturned trashcan and mucky window, his empty mattress and broken furniture, how bits of mirror cover the floor by the bathroom, hide the grime beneath it and glitter. He barks a disbelieving laugh. “Such as?”

“You waking up,” and her voice is sharp, angry. “Walking for the first time and feeding yourself. Your graduation. Getting your own place and finding a job, your first boyfriend, getting a clean MRI. Brian Kinney isn’t the sum of your parts.”

“Embellished and sugar coated versions,” he decides. “What’s one more omission on a pile of hundreds?”

She looks at the ceiling as if praying for strength to god himself. “I asked him to take you back with him. To New York.” She curls her purse strap over her shoulder, looks at Justin and doesn’t make him ask. “He said no.”

Justin nods and isn’t surprised, lets his elbows dig into his knees when he presses the heels of his palms into his eyes, pushes against them until he sees sparks. “Bet you’re just delighted about that.”

“A little, yes. Not for the reasons you’re thinking.” When he looks up again, she’s blurry and standing, puts a hand on her hip. “He’s been here a month and you’re already completely dependent on him.”

He gawks at her. “I’m doing better than I ever have. I touched Emmett today without even trying. I’m working at the diner, going out, lowering my meds. If that’s not independence, I don’t know what is.” He wants to tell her about the beauty, about looking in the mirror and seeing it, even when he didn’t want to, because that’s what Brian does.

Justin can’t make art with words.

She says, "You do it for him," and Justin argues, "I do it because he taught me I can."

She looks at him and doesn't argue, seems to roll this around in her head, and Justin's mother, despite everything, is not a completely irrational person, which Justin knows is why she let it get this far, hid it away and never gave him a chance to explain this. Before she leaves, she tells him, “For what it’s worth, I’d do things differently if I could.”

Justin decides that regret is worth very little.

*

Brian doesn’t answer when Justin knocks at the door to his hotel room that night. He’d asked in the lobby and, since Brian is still checked in, decides to wait.

He sits by the door and plays tic-tac-toe on the sole of his shoe, must defeat himself a hundred times in varying ways, seizes up every time the elevator down the hall pings or a door opens. It’s nine and dark and there’s no way he’ll make it home alone, so he waits for hours, gets cold and brings his knees to his chest, curls into the wall and feels his back ache, raises the hood of his sweater and tries to sleep, but never can.

Brian doesn’t come back until the sky is pinkening just beyond the window at the end of the hall, until Justin’s eyes feel scratchy and slow, until he’s fully experienced a dozen or more pinpricks of dread.

He climbs to his feet when Brian finally approaches, leans against the wall and spreads his palms against the coolness of it.

If Brian’s surprised to see Justin waiting there, then it doesn’t show at all. He walks to his door and opens it, stands just inside the room and uses two fingers to hold it open. It’s just light enough inside that Justin can see the rumpled sheets on the bed, scattered CD cases on the bedside table and a dirty ashtray. It’s just light enough for him to realize there aren’t any clothes, to see the mini-tower of suitcases stacked against the far wall.

Brian slips out of his coat and shoes, stumbles a little to the side, yanks his belt from his pants and exhales at the ceiling. “How long were you waiting?” he asks.

Justin looks at the suitcases, all tidy and tall. He says, “Three years,” and then, “Maybe four,” and Brian laughs, this quiet scoff that bounces around the room, pings against the space with all the resilience of a candy-machine rubber ball. “You’re leaving,” Justin notes.

Brian hops out of a pant leg, doesn’t look at Justin when he answers, “Tomorrow.”

He isn’t surprised. The thing is, he knew Brian for over a year, and Justin will probably never know Brian, not totally. He’s okay with that, because there are some things, some very important and rare things, that Justin can see coming from miles away. When Justin thinks about it there’s some comfort in knowing someone is always going to leave.

He’s seen Brian’s beauty flawed by ugliness ever since that day on the stairs.

Justin wonders, “Were you going to tell me?”

Brian turns and looks at him then. Justin can’t make out his expression until he’s standing close enough to kiss, neck loose and head hanging, arms weighing on Justin’s shoulders. Their foreheads touch and Brian sighs, reeks of sex and booze and the heat of Babylon.

“Eventually,” Brian says, grabs the bottom of Justin’s sweater and pulls it over his head, throws it aside and is already walking away when his fingers brush Justin’s hair from his eyes.

He starts the shower and Justin follows, loses his clothes somewhere between the darkness of the room and the doorway that silhouettes Brian’s figure, his long arms as he shrugs out of his shirt, slides off his underwear and uses the doorframe to stay vertical.

When they’re inside the shower and the steam of the water softens their sight, Justin watches Brian wet his hair. He presses his temple to the tile and tells him, “Did you know ‘Babylon’ was first named ‘Babili’?”

Brian lets the water douse his face.

Justin says, “It means ‘Gate of God’,” and Brian rubs his eyes. He says, “This one time, I told Daphne you were the face of god,” and Brian spits water from his mouth. Justin tells him, “In the bible we know, ‘Babylon’ means ‘to confuse’.”

Brian looks at him and smiles and it’s all wrong, everything, the slant of his lips and the shade of his eyes. “I’m not God. I’m not a doctor, I’m not a fucking couples’ counselor, and I’m not an investment manager.” Brian says, “I’m not a hero, Justin.”

“No one’s expecting you to be.”

“Aren’t they?” He uses the flat of his palm to gently push Justin under the spray, wraps his hand around Justin’s dick and presses their mouths together, licks at the seam of Justin’s lips until he kisses back, rigid and growing hard in his hand

He grabs Brian’s wrist. “You don’t have to—,” but Brian jerks him off with rougher, determined motions, cradles his neck and watches his face.

Brian says with sharp annunciation, “I can’t fix everything.”

“I don’t want you to.”

“No?” Brian dips his head, mouths at Justin’s ear and works him through a shudder. “You don’t want me to make you come?”

“That won’t fix—” but Justin’s voice breaks and his teeth grit together and Justin makes a sound, feels it clawing from the back of his throat. He grinds out, “You don’t have to fix anything.”

Brian mouths something into his shoulder, indiscernible over the spray of the shower, but feels against his skin like something in the shape of Don’t I?

Justin grabs his hair, lets the sound from his throat disappear into Brian’s neck. He begs, “Don’t stop,” and feels the shift of it, feels the exact second that he knows he’ll come for Brian, not because Justin needs it or wants it, and not because it will fix him, because it won’t, it won’t fix Justin, won’t make him beautiful.

It’s just that Justin thinks he gets it now and he’s okay.

Everything, all of this attention, Brian coming back at this particular point in time with Vic’s death painful and sharp and shocking in everyone’s minds and hearts, Brian not bothering to fight Justin’s mother three years ago, buying into her shit, just leaving but never looking back, always looking back, calling and never saying the words but always asking. This won’t fix Justin, can’t fix him, not even a little.

But it might fix Brian.

Justin thinks he gets it now.

Brian twists his wrist, settles into a rhythm that shakes his body with it, and Justin closes his eyes and breathes through his nose, clutches Brian’s neck and whispers, “Don’t stop, don’t stop.”

“Come on,” Brian mouths at his skin and flexes his arm, huffs into Justin’s neck and tells him to, “Let go. Feel it,” and Justin pushes his nose into Brian’s shoulder and tries to breathe, tries to stop his teeth from pressing tender red notches into his lip.

If Brian’s arm gets tired then it doesn’t show at all, not even when the water runs warm instead of steaming-hot, not even when Justin shakes and stiffens, right before exhaling a hard breath and deciding that it won’t happen, it can’t, but still asks Brian not to stop, tries again and again until he’s long past the point his hand would have made it, long enough that he’s dizzy from panting into Brian’s ear and achy from standing, from shaking, from holding onto Brian so firmly.

He can’t stop holding onto him.

It isn’t until Brian’s hand falls to Justin ass and slides between the cleft of it, until Brian touches Justin’s hole and presses there, just feels it, that Justin can detect a spark in the pit of his belly, the aching tickle of it between his legs, memories of Brian behind him and over him vivid in his memory.

He gasps, “Fuck, don’t stop,” and his knees feel like they’re shaking, but he can’t tell if that’s him or Brian’s arm, and when Brian pushes his finger into him, touches his lips to Justin’s temple and slides it deep inside, quick and smooth, Justin claws at his wet skin and keens.

Brian begs him, “That’s it, come for me, come on,” and fucks him with his fist, with his finger, and Justin sobs into his cheek and curls his toes and chases the building heat of it, feels the edge of it fall away until it’s just this, just pleasure, no pain, and Justin doesn’t care that Brian’s doing this to alleviate his guilt.   

He cries out in surprise when he comes. He doesn’t expect it, feels it being pulled from the core of him, feels his knees lock and the muscles of his stomach constrict, and it’s even better than Justin remembers it, all hot and colorful, saccharine-flavored pyrotechnics, and he knows now why he told Daphne that Brian was the face of god, because this is as close to a religious experience as Justin will ever have.

Justin shudders and grunts his name, lets his fingers drift down to Brian’s hand and follows the slowing rhythm of his strokes. Justin is still making sounds, these hard and needy noises from the center of his chest, when he feels the warmth and stickiness that covers Brian’s knuckles, coats his wrist and the speckles the hard plane of his stomach.

Brian’s catching his breath, takes his hand away and washes it under the barely-warm spray of water, and Justin feels inexplicably fragile, buries his face into Brian’s neck and doesn’t let go, not even when the shower’s off and just dripping water onto the shower floor, not even when Brian reaches for a towel and covers him in it, rubs his sides and pushes the hair from Justin’s face.

He says, “Okay?” and Justin nods, doubts his ability to speak, thinks that if he opens his mouth and tried that nothing but a sob would emerge.

He doesn’t feel better when Brian takes him to the bed, not completely, just lies with his cheek pressed to his shoulder and feels boneless, threadless and somehow cold.

Before they can drift into sleep, Justin confides in a whisper, “It wasn’t your fault,” and the sound is harsh in the silence of the room, like a scream in the middle of a library or nails on a chalkboard. “You couldn’t have stopped it, even if you’d been there. It was just—”

He pauses when Brian touches his hair, the barest of aborted caresses.

“It only took one second, you couldn’t have done anything.” Justin remembers Brian saying that he’s not a hero, remembers the look in his eyes, the cold, haunted shade of them. He says, “Ugliness happens, Brian. Don’t let me be yours.”

Brian pretends he’s asleep.

*

Justin wakes up disoriented and alone. It’s not morning, but late afternoon and the bed is cold. The first thing he looks for are the suitcases, which are still tidied by the window and awaiting departure.

He lies there for a long while, surrounded in Brian’s scent and thinking about how every continent is just an island, floating out there in one continuous, infinite sea. He thinks about how nothing is tied-down or connected without the thinnest of threads.

He thinks about the first time he woke up in the hospital, about the tubes down his throat and in his arms, the sound of his mom’s voice and the unbearable brightness of fluorescents, of having threads. He remembers being very confused when his arm wouldn’t move.

Justin thinks that having threads, loving someone, must feel like this, like being paralyzed in hideous and beautiful ways, in painful ways, in ways he woke up confused to see.

Brian enters the room mere minutes later. He’s already impeccably dressed and armed with a Styrofoam coffee cup and a folded newspaper. He stops just inside the room and looks at Justin, curves his lips into a smile that looks fashioned out of necessity.

“Ever get blown by a concierge?”

Justin asks, “Just now?”

“About forty minutes ago.”

“Hot?”

Brian shrugs, drops his paper. “Sufficient.”

Justin gets out of bed, pulls his briefs up his legs and wanders to where Brian’s standing, takes the cup from his hand and blows into it. “Did he offer to arrange spa service?”

“No,” Brian says. “But he did book my plane tickets, so there’s that.”

Justin hums at the mention of him leaving, takes a long drink of the coffee and resolves to show Brian just how okay he is with this, and the thing is, Justin really is.

He is okay with this.

He starts searching the floor for his clothes and Brian wonders, “Aren’t you going to queen out on me?”

Justin scoffs. “What am I going to do, annoy you until you agree to stay? Seems counter-productive.”

“I was talking about the concierge.”

“Oh,” Justin finds his pants and steps into them. “Exercise in futility, don’t you think? Also I need a penis to live vicariously through and Emmett’s not really cutting it nowadays.” He stops in front of Brian and gives him back his coffee, half emptied. “Plus, I’ve found it’s pretty counter-productive in its own right.”

“You won’t need a vicarious cock forever,” Brian assures, looks into the cup and shrugs at it. “The way you’re improving, you’ll probably be taking it up the ass in no time. No shortage of candidates.”

Justin gives him a look. “What is this, generic motivational positivity? Ambiguous flattery?” he snatches a sock from the armchair and says, “Spare me.”

“It’s just a fact,” Brian says plaintively. “You’ll be able to fuck whoever you want, eventually.”

Justin pulls his shirt over his head and guesses, “Probably.” His sweater is the rogue agent, winds up being rumpled and shoved halfway beneath the bed.

He’s on his hands and knees fishing it out when Brian says, “Come with me to New York.”

Justin freezes, blinks into the blackness that’s swallowing his sweater and slowly pulls it toward him. When he’s vertical again, he props himself against the bed, shoves the sweater over his head and manages a, “Why?” which is a feat, a genuine Gold Star Achievement, because what he wants to do is kick him in the balls.

Brian puts the coffee on the table and looks at him. “Because I asked you to.”

Justin uses his fingers to list, “Because my mother asked you to. Because you feel guilty. Because you feel responsible. Because you want—”

“You don’t know what I want.”

“Well that’s the most factual thing I’ve heard all month.” Justin crosses his arms and watches Brian tongue at the corner of his mouth, stare down at the newspaper and slowly unfold it.

“It’s a yes or no question.”

“Why.”

A blink down at the newspaper and then he looks at Justin, lifts his chin, holds his hands out, palms up as if to say, Here I am, deal with me. “Why does it matter?”

And this, this is a question Justin can answer every time, no reservations or doubts, just a passing factoid in the Justin Taylor Life Guide. “Because I love you.” And before Brian can dismiss it, “You don’t believe in love, I get it, ad nauseum, and I’m fine with that, truthfully. But if you’re asking me to come with you, then I think I owe it to myself to ask what exactly it is you’re expecting.”

Brian stares at him.

Justin ventures, “A project? Boyfriend? Roomate? Fuck buddy? What would I be, Brian? What do you want?”

Brian opens his mouth as if to speak, but then smacks his lips, lifts a shoulder and says simply, “I want you with me.”

“Why.”

“Because,” Brian says, “I do.”

Justin wonders if this is how the emotions of Brian Kinney work, and he thinks it must be. See, want, have. Never question the meaning of any one desire, or the reason behind someone giving it to him.

Justin looks away and eyes the suitcases, feels the full force of Brian’s question perhaps a bit belatedly, can’t help but imagine it, Brian and him living together, being… Justin isn’t sure. Maybe they won’t be anything, maybe he’ll just be Brian’s ugliness, the burden he carries because of some misplaced sense of obligation. Maybe he’ll just be his kept boy.

Maybe Justin can’t allow himself to imagine much beyond that. “If I say no, is that it?” Justin crosses his arms tighter against his chest. “Are you going to disappear again and never look back?”

Brian buries a hand into his pocket and offers the smallest of shrugs, face blank. “We can keep in touch,” Brian says, “It’s not an ultimatum.”

When his hand emerges from his pocket it’s with a red and white envelope from Liberty Air. He looks at Justin and waves it, once, walks to him and gently pries his arms apart, never breaks his gaze, not once, just slips the plane ticket into the pouch of Justin’s sweater, sucks on his bottom lip.

He says, “Leaves tomorrow early. It’s yours if you want it, and if you don’t.” Brian grabs his shoulders, gives them a soft rock and says matter-of-factly, “Then don’t.”

Justin doesn’t answer. Not when they leave the hotel room and not on the drive back to Justin’s apartment. And when they’re at the curb to his building, no words have been spoken since, and it feels heavy with the awful finality of it. Justin touches the handle of the door and wonders if he should say goodbye, if Brian would even let him.

In the end he just looks at him, watches Brian stare into the distance, eyes shielded by his mirror-reflection sunglasses and layers of disinterest.  

He gets out of the car without a word, and the whole way up to his floor, all Justin can think about is the irony of having pockets, of filling them with dreadful things, secret things and thread-like things, beautiful and ugly things.

*

Justin stays in his apartment for all of thirty minutes. He remembers the day he moved in, over two years ago, and everyone was excited, all encouraging grins and big voices. It made no sense to him then because they’d hadn’t even seen it, were just assuming this place was A Step Forward.

He looks around it now and doesn’t see a step in any direction. Justin sees the place he ran to when he was too ashamed to stay with his family, too frightened his rage blackouts might go too far. He sees the place he settled for because he couldn’t expect the people offering him refuge to sacrifice simple advantages like having visitors and silent, screamless nights. He sees the only place he could exist without being a burden, a place with no incentive, no reason to aim for anything higher, and no chance of disappointment or failure.

Justin looks around his apartment and sees stagnancy, settling, and—yes, Brian was right, Justin never denied it—complacency.

He stays there for all of thirty minutes.

*

Emmett has his elbows propped on his knees, folds his hands together and rests his chin on them.

Justin mirrors his position from the opposite side of the coffee table.

They both stare into the middle of it. Somewhere in the distance a clock ticks. Emmett’s eyebrows are furrowed rather deeply, a deep chasm between his eyes. He tilts his head just so, uncurls one finger and uses it to point where his gaze is fixed.

He says, “Huh.”

Justin says, “Yep.”

“Well, I—this is. Huh.” Emmett pokes it. “Interesting. Definitely has a certain, uh, gesture’ish feel, and you—” He looks at Justin then, wonders, “Are we happy about this, or? Is it like, ‘yay, Brian asked!’ or is it like, ‘oh no, Brian asked?’”

Justin shrugs. “I don’t know.”

“Right, yes, yet to be determined.” They go back to staring at it. Emmett ventures, “It could be… nice.”

“Could be.”

“It could be not nice.”

“Maybe.”

They stare and really, truthfully, Justin thinks that it’s a little both. A little ‘yay’ and a little ‘oh no’, and in between those two reactions there is a lot of silence, and anger, and uncertainty, and even despite the little ‘yay’ that’s there, Justin really wishes that Brian had never asked, had just picked up and run away as per usual. Then Justin could be talking to Emmett right now about his meeting with Ted, a topic that had been aborted the second Justin pulled the ticket from his pocket.

Justin puts the plane ticket back into his pocket and tries, “So, Ted.”

Emmett doesn’t bite. “You know what I was going to tell you before dinner yesterday?”

“I actually forgot all about it,” Justin admits.

“Well, so much for the deathbed melodrama.” Emmett sighs. “What I was going to say, is that you deserve better than Brian.”

Justin agrees, “You deserve better than Ted.”

“Yes,” Emmett says, “But.”

Justin’s eyes narrow. “That’s not a ‘but’y statement. He totally dicked you over, again and again—”

Emmett holds his hands up in a defensive gesture. “Simmer down there, my ‘but’ has nothing to do with Ted, pun intended, and everything to do with you, pun not intended. What I meant was that Ted didn’t make me happy, and that’s what matters.” Emmett emphasizes, “You deserve better than Brian, but you deserve to be happy most of all.”

“So, what?” Justin is confused. “You’re saying I should go?”

Emmett Hm’s and looks pensive, puts a finger to his chin and notes, “Well you didn’t deny just then that Brian makes you happy. In fact, you basically admitted it, so I suppose...” Emmett looks vaguely put upon. “I’m saying you should go.”

Justin says, “You’re crazy.”

“And you’re going to New York.”

“No.” Justin shakes his head and explains, “You don’t get it. He came back, Em. Twice. And he was calling, like, what, every week? Every month? That’s not the Brian I knew before. He told me he wasn’t looking back, and he was happy about it. Only one thing could have changed that.” Justin concludes, “If you could’ve seen him last night… it was just really obvious that he feels responsible for what happened. I think—I think it’s been eating at him.” Justin says, “I know it has.”

Emmett, who’s been watching with knitted eyebrows and a frown, says, “You’re right, that’s not the Brian from before.”

Justin decides, “I don’t want that. I don’t want someone to be with me out of obligation, or… just to pay some figurative debt. That’s worse than being with someone who lies about loving you, because at least then, you don’t know it’s a lie until you do.”

Emmett repeats, “That’s not the Brian from before,” and Justin blinks.

“I know. He didn’t have anything to feel guilty about before.”

Emmett says, “Maybe he didn’t have anything he cared about before.”

Justin, who palms his face and scrubs his eyes, says, “I’m sorry, I—it kind of sounds like you’re defending Brian here, and I’ve had enough Twilight Zone for one day.”

Emmett throws his hands in the air, rolls his eyes. “If he didn’t care, he wouldn’t feel guilty. It’s like you said, this is Brian. No apologies, no accountability, no strings. Brian Kinney doesn’t feel responsible for anybody. There have only ever been four exceptions to that rule, sweetie. Michael, Lindsay, Gus, and you.”

Justin says, “That’s a stretch.”

“Stretchy as it may be,” Emmett flicks his wrist, “he doesn’t feel guilty for just anyone.”

Justin knows Brian gives a shit, maybe even knows somehow, deep down, that Brian cares about him, more than a trick or a steady fuck, less than a Michael, somewhere in between those two, on some point in the spectrum that Justin will never pinpoint.

He just wonders if that’s good enough.

Emmett lies sideways on the sofa, rests his head against the arm of it and stretches his hand toward Justin.

Justin links their pinkies.

“You need to get away from here. Rekindle that flame,” Emmett suggests, “Make it a trial basis, you can always come back.”

He wonders, “What about you?”

A scoff. “I will be finer than frog hair. Take it from the big nelly queen, nothing fuels a flame like Liberty Avenue.”

Justin points out, “Then shouldn’t I be here, too?”

Emmett swings their hands, frowns at them. He says, “There’s more than one avenue to Liberty, Dollface.”

*

Justin’s mother says, “You have to take your insurance papers, and have your medical history transferred. I’ll take care of your lease, but you had better call me every day, is that understood?”

He tells her, “I didn’t say I was going,” and she gives him a small, indulgent smile.

“Every two days. No less.”

*

When it comes right down to it, Justin decides there might be no ‘yay’ or ‘oh no’. Maybe there’s just anger, because it isn’t fair, it isn’t, to put this on Justin, and without giving him a reason as to why he should.

It’s manipulative.

He looks around his apartment that night and feels it, knows there’s nothing for him here, not really, knows that even being Brian’s naked maid would make this life he’s settled for pale in comparison. The thing about Brian is that he knows, has always known, how Justin has felt and has never given an inch beyond I want you with me.

Justin thinks that’s shit. Brian also wants his Cartier watch with him, but when the day is done, it gets thrown into his bedside table until the next business meeting.

He’s sick with it, cleans the torn paper from the floor and dumps his broken mirror into his trashcan. Justin doesn’t sleep, feels the itch to leave this place like a tangible thing, feels it under his skin and in his bones, like an infection, and he knows he’s going to leave, he just doesn’t know where he’s going yet.

Justin packs a duffle just before sunrise, because if there’s one thing Brian Kinney ever taught Justin Taylor, it’s that no avenue to Liberty was ever paved on ‘good enough’.

Not even when it leads to Brian.

*

Justin doesn’t make it.

Brian’s checked out of his hotel by the time he arrives there, so Justin goes straight to the airport, which he doesn’t like.

He also doesn’t like the cab he takes, and he doesn’t care much for the place itself, doesn’t like security, could do without the asshole behind him nearly shoving him through the processing line, and  Justin hates the walking and the searching and being watched.

By the time he reaches Brian’s gate, Justin isn’t doing particularly well. He can only see the back of his head since he’s sitting near the back, facing one of the floor-to-ceiling windows, and when Justin drops his duffle at Brian’s feet, he’s not really satisfied by the reaction he gets.

Brian’s hand slashes a long black line through the sheet of paper he’s scribbling notes on, eyes making a slow rise to Justin’s from the duffle between them.

“Tell me I’m not settling.”

Brian blinks. “Come again?”

“If I go with you.” Justin demands, “Tell me I’m not just settling all over again.”

Brian stares at him for a moment, rubs his mouth and continues writing. “Not for me to decide.”

“Brian.”

“I don’t know what you want.”

“Yes, you do.”

Brian scoffs at his paper, mocking softly, “You want me to hire a plane to spell out ‘BK+JT FOREVER’ into the sky,” and Justin’s fists curl.

“Could you not be a dick right now?”

“I already told you,” Brian snaps, looks at Justin with an expression just this side of annoyed. “I want you with me. Take it or leave it, I don’t know what else to say.”

“Say it again,” Justin declares. “Two words shorter.”

Brian drops his pen and smiles, placid and mean all at once. He says, “You’re arguing semantics,” and Justin has to look away, take a deep breath and feel it stretch his nostrils, inflate his chest and fill his belly.

He bends down and yanks the duffle from Brian’s feet, is walking away before it’s even in the air at his side, and Justin thinks, sort of actually knows, if that’s what Brian thinks, that feelings are semantics, then he has his answer, and the thing is, it doesn’t hurt.

Justin realizes he never let himself expect more.

“Funny how I thought you’d grown up,” Brian calls from behind him.

Justin shouldn’t bite, but he does. “Grown up?” He stalks back to where Brian is and snatches the pad of paper from his lap. “You wouldn’t know the first thing about growing up, Brian. You think I want declarations? Roses and poetry and fucking serenades? Been there, done that, found the cello player. Before this last month, the closest thing to affection I’d felt in three years, which was nothing but words by the way, turned out to be completely bogus, and even I’m not so emotionally constipated I can’t admit I want you.” Justin decides, “If you can’t say it and mean it, then I’m not going to bother. I’m sorry, Brian, but I can’t.”

Justin knows what it sounds like—an ultimatum—but he doesn’t mean for it to be. The thing is, Justin will always be this person. He will always sleep with his back against the corner. He’ll always know who’s behind him, how tall they are, what their expressions are like, what they’re wearing, how bulky their pockets are, and how loud their feet fall, always.

Justin will always be protecting himself.

Brian shakes the foot that’s resting on his knee and stares out over the tarmac. He ultimately answers, “I want you with me,” and Justin fists the strap of his duffle, feels it bite into his palm and sting. Brian’s eyes jump to his, the briefest of glances, when he adds, “I want you.”

It’s clear to see what it takes for him to say it, the rigidity of his jaw and the jerk of his wrist, the roll of his eyes he tries so hard to battle, is probably calling himself a million different names in his head, Lesbian, silly faggot, fucking fairy nelly queen breeder, every single one of them, and Justin is about to prove just how grown up he is.

He places the duffle on the floor and carefully seats himself next to Brian. He doesn’t make it into a thing. There is no kiss, no embrace, no giggling, and no promises.

Justin says, “There are terms. Things I need out of necessity. Some are non-negotiable.”

Brian doesn’t miss a beat, because he might be the most emotionally constipated man on the planet, but one thing Brian Kinney excels at being, above all else, is a good business man.

“Funny, I was going to say the same thing.” Brian retrieves his notepad and continues writing, hair falling over his forehead. “You’ll see a doctor. Someone qualified to treat your condition. And you’re going to rehab your hand.” Brian’s eyes slide to the side, long enough to catch Justin’s.

He nods.

Brian continues, “I work late. Sometimes I work for days at a time, and sometimes I have to travel. I make plans and break them, but only because I have to. Month-long vacations come at a price.”

Justin says, “Anything else?”

“Yes.” This is where Brian puts his notes away, clips his pen into the pocket of his jacket and looks Justin in the eye. “We’re not married. I fuck who I want, when I want, but—” He picks a stray piece of lint from Justin’s shoulder, flicks it to the side. “—I do it safely and I’ll avoid repeats.”

It’s almost laughable to Justin, Brian thinking this has to be said, but he wonders at the wording there. ‘I’ll’, as if he doesn’t avoid repeats already, as if this is an offer, an accommodation made especially for Justin, and Justin probably can’t have sex, not the all-out full-on fucking they used to, not yet at least, and it occurs to him that this, Brian wanting Justin and more than just sex with him, is the real gesture, the real declaration and roses and poetry and serenade.

Justin lets his mouth form the smallest quirk of a grin. “Anything else?”

Brian considers this, lifts a shoulder. “Those are my terms.”

Justin already knows his. “I want financial independence where at all possible. As you’ve already pointed out, we’re not married, and I’m not a bill. However—” And Justin knows he’s pushing it. “—I want a label. I don’t care what it is; boyfriend, partner, cocksucker, cleaning lady. Whatever you choose, I’ll be happy with it, but I want it explicit.”

He can practically see Brian deflate, finger rubbing at his lips as he looks away, rolling his eyes, and it’s then that his plane begins boarding, people filtering through the gate and disappearing in a single file line.

Justin decides it’s probably a good time to tell him, “And if we’re sharing a bed, I don’t want other men in it. In fact—” This is the part Justin hates, the only term he really regrets having, and he thinks Brian can tell, the way he turns his head, faces Justin and curves a brow into a disbelieving, Now what, expression.

Justin tries a smile that feels grimaced. “Actually, I’d prefer it if you didn’t bring tricks home at all. I can’t—I mean, having strangers in my space, it just. It makes me really… edgy.” He says at Brian’s still, blank expression, “It’s not about us. Or you, fucking other guys. I promise, it’s not about that.”

Brian deadpans, “You’re serious.”

“The worst part about the cello player wasn’t that Ethan fucked him. It was that he let him into my apartment. I didn’t sleep for like five days. Actually, I almost moved out altogether.” Justin explains, “It’s the only place I’ve ever been able to let my guard down. Without that…” Justin shrugs and knows he can’t explain it, not fully, the constant vigilance, how exhausting it is to be alert, every second of every day.

He needs one place where he doesn’t have to be.

Brian’s pressing his fingers into his eyes, massaging them like he has a headache, and Justin feels the bulk of the hope he’d just found slip away, and it was easier, so much easier, when it was Brian taking that hope, and not Chris fucking Hobbes.

“I know it’s your home,” Justin says. “And you worked hard to earn all the benefits that come with it, so if that’s asking too much, I’d understand, okay?”

Brian’s head rolls back and he inhales, slow and even, breathes it out into a hard huff at nothing in particular. He lifts himself from his seat and fixes his sleeves, grabs his carry-on and tells Justin, “Well. Are you coming or not?”

Justin asks, “Really?” and Brian gives him a look.

“Get on the fucking plane.”

*

Justin gets excited over very few things lately. One of them is this indie artist-zine from the college he would have went to years ago—the Institute of Fine Arts. It arrives every tenth of the month and Justin enjoys flipping through it, pretends he’s one of the students featured there, the kind who attends pretentious dorm parties, complains about term projects and passionately debates which traditional mediums have come to be characterized by heterogeneity. This and that, maybe pretends to be the kind of student who uses his art as a vehicle for political and social agendas, makes a difference.

And Justin would the kind of student who's in love—madly in love—and every day would be the end of the world, every kiss would be special and urgent and so perfect it hurt.

Justin has been many different people in those stolen moments; smart people and beautiful people, assholes and clever people. Most of all, Justin was of the mind that he’s been people that are impossible to become. He’ll never be that—has been shaped and molded by his inherent lack of ability to become those people.

This was before Brian Kinney touched him at a funeral.

Justin and Brian kiss on the plane, but it isn’t that. It isn’t special and urgent and so perfect it hurts. The truth is, the take off gives Justin a panic attack, because he hasn’t slept in what feels like days and he never took his medication, never thought he’d need it like this.

Brian kisses Justin to distract him, just grabs his chin and pushes his tongue into his mouth, and while the plane shakes and roars and climbs in altitude, Justin thinks, okay.

Okay, maybe he can’t be the perfect people he dreams of, but he can be better people, the kind who are flawed, kind of like this, kind of like how Brian kisses Justin because of something awful, and the fact that it works, that Justin kisses back and the roar in his ears is suddenly his pulse, the fact that Brian cradling his jaw and thumbing the point where their lips meet can drown it out, that makes it special.

“He’s staring,” he tells Brian when their kisses have slowed, have become lazy nips and wet smacks, and the man across the aisle is clearing his throat, but it sounds less like a throat-clearing and more like an acerbic demand.

An intercom voiceover tells Justin it’s okay to remove his seatbelt.

Brian turns his head, gives the guy a long, even stare.  “Do you mind? Me and my cocksucker are trying to make out.”

Justin stifles a laugh, jabs an elbow into Brian’s side, and it’s sort of a miracle if Justin’s being honest, because the man is making him nervous, all rapier eyes and disapproving scowl and too close for comfort.

Brian makes Justin feel like safe people.

“Forgive me,” Brian says, grabs a magazine and tells it, “My cocksucker and I.”

*

“Having regrets?” Brian’s standing outside the bathroom Justin’s currently occupying—Brian’s bathroom in Brian’s ‘studio’, and the truth is that Justin only caught a blur of it as he raced to the toilet, but he thinks it absolutely laughable that his apartment and Brian’s could in any universe be referred to by the same name.

He opens his mouth to answer, but heaves into the toilet instead. “Sorry,” Justin croaks. “I need—”

“Medication, but it’d be pointless to take it now.”

Justin tries to agree, or maybe to say he’s sorry again, because he is, he’s sorry, but he’s puking once more, and he feels stupid, stupid and shaky and dizzy and happy.

He doesn’t have regrets.

When he can breathe again without feeling his stomach curdle, Justin flushes the toilet and exits the bathroom, realizes that closing the door had been a futile effort, seeing as how its entire middle is glass, and not the frosted kind.

Justin looks at Brian and laughs, pulls the back of his wrist over his mouth. “New York,” he says, without explanation, not that he needs one.

Brian smiles silently, grimly.

When Justin stopped to think about it—and he hadn’t, not until they landed at JFK International, because it was all so sudden and maybe it’s the sleep deprivation or crippling anxiety talking, but everything feels hazy and not quite real—but now that he actually is stopping to think about it, Justin finds it ironic, in the most non-amusing fashion imaginable, that he’s moving to one of the most populated metropolises on the earth.

Brian uses the barest of gestures to point Justin to the small, spiral staircase in the corner. He tells him to, “Go lay down, I have to send some emails.”

Justin gets his duffle instead, goes back to the bathroom and cleans himself up, inspects everything with index-eyes, Brian’s razor and mouthwash, his collection of cologne and aftershave, the seventy dollar moisturizer he’d never admit to applying compulsively, nail clippers and antibacterial soap, hair gel and an electric toothbrush, all lined up in perfect single file.

Brian is a touch neurotic.

Justin finds it all very adorable.

He can observe the whole vantage from Brian’s open loft bedroom, so he climbs the staircase and goes straight to the railing, lets his hair hang over his face as he peers down. He can see Brian at his desk near the kitchen, leaned close to his monitor with a finger on his lips.

Justin says, “Your place is amazing,” and doesn’t have to raise his voice. Everything is glass; the doors, the cabinets, the dividers, the whole south wall that gives a half-decent view from twenty floors up, white furniture and hard floors. Everything echoes.

Brian says, “I know,” and begins typing, the kind of furious clicks that suggest total concentration.

He tries to imagine Brian living here. It’s nothing like his old loft, which was some amalgamation of urban warmth and contemporary lines. This place is modern, minimalistic, open and bare.

Cold.

There are no pictures, no paintings, no rugs, no throws, no accents, no novelties, not one ounce of individuality. There is no Brian in this place.

There is no color.

In fact, the more Justin thinks about it, the more he wonders if it didn’t look exactly like this when Brian moved in, if maybe hundreds of other studios in this building might mirror this one, before the owners moved in and made it their own, lived in the spaces and added the little touches that made it lived-in, made it home.

When Justin realizes the clicks of typing have ceased, he glances back at Brian.

He’s staring at Justin.

Brian inspects him just as closely as Justin had the furniture and décor, or lack thereof. Justin feels startled, stands still and lets his hair hang, watches Brian’s face and the flat line of his lips, feels the force of his eyes like an inhale of smoke and sees something fragile there.

It’s then that Justin realizes this isn’t Brian’s home. Justin realizes that him and the others, Deb and Mikey and Emmett and Ted, they aren’t the only ones who’ve settled. They aren’t the only ones who are scared and sort of fucked up and maybe a little tired of making the wrong decisions to bother trying anymore. Justin realizes the only difference between them and Brian is that Brian ran away and they hid.

But at least they hid together.

For all his efforts, Justin is not the loneliest person in this room.

Justin swallows past an uncomfortable lump in his throat, tells Brian to, “Come here,” and only half expects him to comply, but Brian presses a button on his computer and lifts himself from the chair, stretches as he crosses the room.

When he appears from the staircase, Brian gives a wry smile and kicks off his shoes. “Eager to earn your ‘cocksucker’ title?”

Justin cups the back of Brian’s neck, pulls his head forward until it rests against his, until he can feel Brian’s sigh, pressing against his chest and tickling his chin, more than he can hear it. He whispers, “Brian,” because he doesn’t think he can say what he really means without pushing him away, seeing walls thrown up a mile wide.

Without warning, Brian presses their mouths together. He kisses Justin hard, like a freight train, holds his face and breathes into his mouth, barrels into his body, and Justin vows to paint Brian’s life with color, not because Brian needs it, and not because Justin pities his loneliness, but because Justin couldn’t stand not to. He thought he got it before, that time in the shower, why Brian needed Justin to be better, but he thinks he was wrong—painfully terribly unforgivably wrong.

Justin all but climbs Brian’s body to meet him, fists his hand into his hair and pulls on Brian’s neck until his feet drag the ground, until he’s kissing down instead of up, and Brian’s grabbing at his shirt, his waist and his sides, his neck and then his shoulder, frantically indecisive until his hands settle claw-like under Justin’s ass, holding all his weight and pinning it to him.

He drops Justin onto the bed, but Justin’s holding him so tightly that the bounce, the down and up of it, propels his chin into Brian’s, and there’s a crack and a hiss and Justin tastes the coppery edge of blood, but he doesn’t know whose it is because they’re still licking into each other’s mouths, and it could be either of them, but it’s probably both.

Brian strips their clothes like they’ve personally offended him, gnashes his teeth at wily shirt fabric, glares daggers at buttons, dares zippers to rebel him, and when the full force of that gaze moves to Justin, he feels breathless, like being punched in the chest or kicked in the gut.

Brian presses their hips together and thrusts against him, thigh to belly to chest.  Justin wraps his legs around his waist and can’t remember sex quite like he used to, the blinding pleasure of penetration, but he’s convinced this is better; the dirty, rough friction of grinding, the smash of hips and the aching knock of bones, Brian’s mouth on Justin’s neck, balls mashed together, panting like dogs.

It’s a different kind of penetration.

He wrestles Brian with his arms and legs until their positions are reversed, until Justin can grind down against him and whine into his mouth, pulls away long enough to spit between their bodies and make the slide that much smoother.

He cradles Brian’s head and gasps into his neck, would have pulled away long before if it weren’t for Brian beneath him, jaw locked taut and eyes slammed shut, just on the edge of coming, and Justin’s convinced he won’t himself, but he doesn’t care, so he keeps smashing them together, again and again, until his teeth sink into skin and it’s suddenly not just Brian’s orgasm driving him.

Justin looks at Brian when he comes, vaguely registers that Brian’s beat him, already pliant and breathless by the time Justin jerks to a halt, shudders and cries Brian’s name, borderline frightened by the unexpected intensity of orgasm. He closes his eyes when Brian sweeps the hair from his face, buries his head into Brian’s neck and shakes, feels his teeth chatter.

It takes a long while, for Justin, for that sensation of fragility to fade. When it finally does, his stomach is sore, his thighs ache, his hips feel bruised, and Brian doesn’t mention having to lie beneath him and stroke his spine for thirty minutes, just peels himself away and tells Justin, “I have lube, you know. In abundance.”

Brian grimaces at his crotch and cleans himself up, bitches all the while about the consistency and crudeness of spit like he hasn’t had the occasional, hasty spit-fuck before, something Justin knows for a fact is a lie.

Justin rubs a wet towel over his belly and jokes, “I never earned my title.”

Brian slides his briefs up his legs and sighs. “I suppose we’ll have to settle for something more pedestrian.”

“Does it rhyme with foybrend?”

“No.”

“Does it rhyme with tartner?”

He gives Justin a long, scathing look. “…maybe.”

“Really?” Justin crawls to the edge of the bed, snaps the elastic against Brian’s waist. “Get the fuck out, really?” His smile is only ten percent attributed to the decision; the rest is strictly post-coital.

Brian steps out of reach, scoffing, “Fuck off, I have to answer more emails,” and Justin flops back to the bed, stretches his arms and arches high.

“Sure thing, partner.”

Brian pauses on the staircase, looks at Justin and warns, “Don’t fucking push it, Sunshine.”

He holds up a palm, solemnly swears, “Discretion is my utmost priority.” After a dozens footsteps, “Partner.”

Brian’s voice rings out from below, “Shut up,” and Justin laughs, can’t help it really.

Justin watches him once again from the loft, only this time they’re both barely dressed. Justin threads his legs through the spokes in the railing and lets his feet dangle over the edge. Sometimes, every now and then, Brian will blink, and when his eyelids lift, he’s looking at Justin, just the merest of glimpses. He touches his mouth like he always does when he’s focused, only this time Justin thinks, he’s maybe ninety percent certain, that Brian is disguising a curl of his lips.

Whenever it happens, Justin’s feet swing back and forth, and he can’t help but smile himself, because the truth is that even if Justin can’t say the words all the time, even if he has to say something else to wrestle them back down, even if they might scare Brian into throwing up walls, Justin means them.

He’s always meant them, even from that first time, back when everyone thought him too young and naïve to really understand what they meant, before he could even properly measure the significance of it himself.

Before he was sunshine and before he was darkness, Justin loved Brian, and it’ll always be a part of him, just like the ugly things, just like the sunny things.

That’s one thing he was wrong about.

The truth is that Justin is still that naïve, love-struck seventeen-year-old. And he’s still that broken, cynical nineteen-year-old.

But he’s so much more.

Justin is people has hasn’t become yet, people his mother and Emmett and Brian and will shape him into, people the world will mold, people Justin will find and be surprised to meet, people he’ll love and people he’ll hate, important people, wanted people, people who paint Brian’s life with vivid, striking colors.

Justin’s feels full with it, like his soul isn’t big enough to contain all the people he’ll be. He’s in a city he can’t be part of, not today, not yet, but someday soon he’ll tackle that, because he has what he needs to become stronger people; pockets and dreams, threads and war paint, supernovas and knock-down-drag-outs, ugliness and beauty and above all, liberty.

Justin is people he hasn’t become yet.

He can’t wait to get started.