RESOLUTION
Title: Resolution
Written By: silent_seas
Timeline: Starts the night before Justin’s departure for NYC and ends about 18 months later.
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: A little angst, but it gets better.
Summary: Justin makes an unusual work of art that changes his relationship with Brian.
Author Notes: My first fic of any kind. I apologize if it sucks.
12:50 pm, November 8, 2005. Pittsburgh airport.
Justin hates the way airplanes smell.
He had hopes when he decided to move to New York, but those ideas feel uncomfortably remote once he finds seat 24B and takes a breath. And fuck no, he does not regret refusing Brian’s offer of a first class ticket. Not even when the edge of the seat starts digging into the backs of his knees after only 15 minutes of waiting for the boarding process to finish.
They shouldn’t really call it a process, though; this is menwomenchildrenluggagepets, one big crush inside a steel tube. Like a goddamn can of Pringles, with the chips set in a row before being sealed inside. With the stale air.
Except that after the plane is empty again, there won’t be people-fragments lying in a little pile in the back row, and the passengers probably won’t get eaten, and he is stopping this train of thought absolutely right now, before the balding businessman in seat 24A can realize he has unwittingly booked a flight next to an artistic twentysomething madman. Or mad twink. Whatever.
Justin needs a drink, but he doesn’t order one. He rubs a (purposely non-teenager-ish) shoe back and forth over the carpet, struggling to make his mind stop spewing run-on nonsense and frustration over things that haven’t happened yet.
He wonders if he’ll be one of the very few people whose life in New York starts off better than anticipated. He isn’t sure if that would make him lucky to avoid the disillusionment, or if it would just prove how damn cynical he can be. Oh well.
* * *
Justin arrives at the new apartment to find stacks of his boxes…and a perfectly made bed covered with what has to be the softest, warmest blue blanket ever. There’s a note on the pillow. Two words:
Love,
Daphne
He turns it over and reads the rest,
…and in case you’re wondering, this was all my own idea. Call me sometime, k.
Justin smiles; that last sentence is not a question. And if Brian had thought of the bed, his note would’ve made the same point, only it would’ve taken him at least one obvious sexual innuendo and possibly a lot of sarcasm.
Five minutes later:
“Hi Brian, I thought I’d call you when I got in, and I’m in my apartment now. Daphne got her friend to make up the bed for me, and she got me an awesome blanket, which is cool. And you’re right, it was stupid of me to refuse that first-class seat, even if it is a really short flight. Well, it wasn’t too bad actually, kind of relaxing. But not at the beginning, that sucked. And don’t even try telling me you’ve done anything today besides lay in bed and smoke. It won’t work.”
Brian uses his best mock-innocent tone of voice.
"I think I may be imagining this whole conversation. Or perhaps I’m not and you’re seriously lacking in some kind of logic at the moment...What the hell did they give you on the plane, and why do I always end up with pretzels instead of that?”
Justin giggles tiny bit. “Nothing but water. Hey, cool, you dream about me. Or you might. Do I top you?”
Oh shit. Justin wants to know when and why he reverted to a babble-prone 17 year-old, and whether the condition is permanent this time. Shit. He momentarily searches for a way to recover the conversation, but then he reminds himself that he seems to be in an ohmigod I’m living in New York City and I’m by myself with no job mind warp-and that Brian knows Justin can be more mature than this. He will be.
But that leads to thoughts of how they had fucked the night before, the undercurrents to every movement, the new things they had not-said and just done instead…Justin can’t, won’t revisit that. Not now. He stammers,
“Hey, sorry. I’m a little looped here. What I meant to say is…What are you wearing?”
The words sound painfully distracted, and Brian doesn’t turn the conversation to sex. A long pause drifts up between them. Justin can feel Brian straining to say something, fighting habit and distance and uncertainty. Right as Justin starts to worry, he hears the clink-scritch of Brian’s lighter, and then,
“Mikey pitched a fit over losing the promo posters for the first edition of some lame new comic. Lightning Rod Avengers, or the Man with Five Independently-Rotating Heads, or some shit like that."
Things melt a little between them.
Justin doesn’t picture Brian at all this time, despite knowing the exact few positions Brian falls into when lying on the bed to talk on the phone and smoke. Instead, Justin concentrates on Brian’s voice and the way he occasionally clears his throat between breaths.
Despite his honed awareness of visual form and the human body, there are so many elements of Brian that Justin cannot instinctively understand and recreate. He spends his time focusing on those things, knowing the rest will happen naturally.
* * *
Justin doesn’t exactly lack intelligence or self-esteem, but there are times when he feels fucking stupid.
Like on the Tuesday after he moves to New York, when he buys a 12-foot by 9-foot canvas without realizing it won’t actually fit in the door to the apartment. The building door, not just the opening to his room. But this is good, because he ends up walking all over the neighborhood to look for an actual workspace or a place to stash the canvas, whichever comes first.
He meets a group of people outside a convenience store. The least shifty of the three guys asks,
“You’re an artist, right?”
“Huh?”
“You have six flecks of yellow paint inside your left ear.”
“Umm, ok. What do you do?”
“Photographer.”
“You do photographers, or you are one?” Justin doesn’t really want to know, but this is technically his first multi-sentence exchange with a New Yorker, so he figures he shouldn’t just walk away. Yet.
The guy cracks a smile. “Right, there would be a difference. Osmosis doesn’t really apply to talent. And if you think about it, we’re all lucky that fucking doesn’t involve that much osmosis. It’s diffusion, if anything. Since we’re not made entirely of wa-”
Half a second later and four very large steps away, Justin hears the nutjob photographer call after him,
“Hey, you’re new here. You need a studio?”
* * *
8:13 pm, November 7, 2005. The loft.
Despite all their past drama, Brian is unprepared for how much he hates this. Justin is...wrong. Distracted and resigned and so unnervingly blank and still. Not-Justin. There is intermittent talking-about studio space, survival, time-but no matter how Justin looks at him, Brian feels like a life-size cardboard cutout wobbling in the center of an empty room. He sips a drink and fights to keep the corners of his mouth from turning downward, but they do anyway. Later, the kissing and sex is the closest thing Brian will ever feel to an act of prayer, of worship, and he falls apart a little more.
11:42 pm, November 7, 2005.
Brian holds out a condom, turns onto his stomach, and slowly spreads his legs wide. He can hear that Justin’s answering gasp has nothing to do with sex.
“Hello, flight reservation desk? I’d like to change my departure time. La Guardia, flight 2704. 12:50 pm instead of 10:00 am. Yes, I have my credit card info…"
Then Justin spreads himself out over Brian and lets Brian’s breathing set their rhythm. Justin fucks him with subtle rolls of his hips so intense and smooth that both of them can barely breathe. Orgasm is silent, too-a deep, unwinding shiver that seems to take forever to fade.
Eventually, Brian manages to turn his head and give Justin a gaze that means, “If I ask you to do that again any time in the next 8 hours, I wouldn’t mind if you accidentally acquiesced, but it would probably be safer for both of us if you assume I’m delusional and tell me to shut the fuck up.”
But then he actually says that out loud, too.
“Huh?”
Brian nods, “Exactly.”
“Um, Brian, I don’t think I need to mention that you are verging on what is typically called post-coital babble, do I?”
Silence.
Justin skips the opportunity to gloat. Instead, he speaks into the soft hair that rests behind Brian’s ear and curls down onto his neck.
“Sleep. I’m here. I’ll be here in the morning.”
But Brian won’t remember the goodbye kiss in bed, the one with his arm still instinctively pushed over his face to keep the morning light out of his eyes. He won’t fully wake until it’s dark again, and he’ll be grateful for missing those first hours of empty loft and constant, dull ache.
* * *
9:35 pm, January 22, 2006. Justin’s apartment.
Justin wonders why all the really big, pivotal ideas happen when he’s supposed to be paying attention to something else. Brian proposed, and Justin realized he needed to go live in New York. Daphne calls for the first time in months, and he finally figures out what to put on that big-ass canvas.
The tone of her voice sinks in-upbeat, curious, and a bit gossipy, as usual-but none of the words do, because he can picture exactly how the painting will look when finished, and holy shit, it scares him. This is bad. And possibly very good for his career.
“Justin!!”
“Wha-Oh, sorry. I kinda zoned out. I need to get to my studio.”
“You know, since Van Gogh cut off his own ear, I’m pretty sure he was a crazy freak, but I’m thinking he could still hold a conversation.”
Justin can feel her teasing smile, and he relaxes a bit.
“You were right, New York really has made you all discombobulated. You should go visit Brian for a while. No talking necessary there.”
“Actually…”
That scared feeling moves through him again.
10:18 am, January 23, 2006. The studio.
A car horn drones as traffic speeds through the intersection several floors below, and Justin wakes up. He tries to stand, but something tugs on his shirt and holds him down. His hands move over the fabric, over the smooth, cold surface beneath him, and finally to the edge of something pressing across the front of his thighs. Trying again, a dull ripping noise tells him he has pulled free, and he rubs his face to regain his bearings.
He had fallen asleep on his canvas.
Incongruous smears in the lower part of the painting form the shape of his torso and arms, and an oval smudge shows where the weight of his head rested. From a distance, it looks like a human figure has melted through the composition, leaving behind only subtle distortions in line and shading.
For a moment, Justin considers redoing that area, but as his gaze moves over the whole canvas to take in the colors and the design, he knows he shouldn’t.
The painting is finished, and he can feel that something in him has changed.
* * *
7:00 pm, May 19, 2006. Kinnetik.
Brian turns away from his laptop to grab his cell phone. It’s Justin’s ringtone. Brian answers before he can think about why he might not want to.
“Justin.”
“Hi, Brian. Are you busy at the moment?”
“No, why?”
A pause. Then, “Remember how I’ve been taking samples of my recent work to some galleries around here? I haven’t ended up with any major offers yet, but I did get one painting into a summer show. I figured you’d want to hear about it.”
“You assumed correctly. Congratulations, Justin. Told you that you would be a success.”
“Not there yet, but this is a good start.”
“When’s the show?”
“June 30th, but I think you might want to fly up here a day in advance. You should see this thing before other people do.”
Brian nearly makes a comment about celebratory fucking, but the serious edge in Justin’s voice stops him. There’s something Justin wants him to know.
“I can be there on the 29th , not a problem.”
Justin changes the subject to Kinnetik’s latest campaigns, and then to Gus and Michael. Brian asks about the city, the apartment-mate, and Justin’s decision to take shifts at a bookstore and a deli until he can find better work.
Afterwards, Brian reviews the whole thing in his head, surprised that talking was so easy this time. Justin had seemed different, too, but not in the way that has bothered him since he left Pittsburgh. Today, Justin was focused, quiet without seeming disconnected. Himself again, perhaps…but more than that.
Later that night, Brian calls Justin from the loft. They have another easy conversation, about some horrendously campy movie Michael and Brian saw last weekend. Brian strokes himself the whole time, too softly to lead to anything.
* * *
1:46 pm, June 29, 2006. LaGuardia airport.
Brian walks off the plane, into the terminal, past the security gates, and he doesn’t see Justin waiting for him. When he scans over the faces in the room several more times to no avail, he has a moment of panic, and maybe a little anger. But then he feels Justin wrapping his arms around him from behind, almost breathing him in.
When he turns around and Justin moves to kiss him, Brian pushes firmly on his shoulders and stops him. He brushes a thumb over the side of Justin’s face and looks at him with the briefest hint of playfulness. Wait, it says. Not here.
Given that Brian has a hotel room for his visit (a huge, cushy bed with Justin in it, more specifically) they compromise on taking a cab instead of a limo from the airport. Justin gives the address for his studio instead of the hotel, but Brian doesn’t feel like asking why. He leans his head on top of Justin’s for the trip, letting Justin’s scent soothe the unusual nervous excitement crackling through him. Cigarettes, sweat, cologne, and that other unidentifiable, ever-present thing. A wave of comfort and familiarity hits Brian and makes him feel incredibly drowsy, but a moment later Justin opens the cab door, and the city’s energy rushes back upon him.
3:30 pm, June 29, 2006.
A huge, covered canvas looms up along the studio’s entire left wall. Brian is surprised how intimidating it seems, which naturally means he must walk directly over to it and brush a hand over the cloth. To come close and touch something is to make it ordinary, understandable, within his control. Subconsciously, he knows that despite their years together, a part of Justin will always remain free and unpredictable-entirely separate from Brian-and this is why Brian will never lose interest.
Justin looks directly at him and speaks with a determined calm that makes Brian hard. “I know it’s a lot to ask, but you might want to take some time before you tell me what you think of it. This is different from anything else I’ve done.”
“Well, I’m sure it’s still geniu-”
The cover falls away from the painting mid-sentence, and Brian is utterly lost. He can feel his face turning a strong shade of pink, and at first he’s not sure if it’s from embarrassment, anger, or both. This can’t be real. This can’t be Justin’s, his gigantic twelve by nine masterpiece being shown to the entire fucking world in two days.
Oh fuck. No…fuck him. It’s too much.
Time passes in silence. Justin looks only at Brian, not at the painting. Brian leans up against the studio door, facing a window.
When Brian starts to feel a bit more grounded, he takes another look at the canvas, and a bit of his mother flares up in him.
How dare he put this in a gallery! Why did he do this? Couldn’t he have choosen something else? If this painting is the reason why Justin stopped acting so..lost, what does that mean? Is this some twisted way for him to say he doesn’t want me anymore?
But then he remembers Justin asking him to come to New York early, to see the thing before the showing. A deep breath, and then he forces himself to examine it more closely, like he would any of Justin’s work.
Color explodes from every part of the composition, hundreds of different hues overlaid in wide arcs, arrays of shapes, and swipes that make the canvas seem to pulse with a life of its own. Even the shadows vary in shades of brown, purple, red, green, blue…It appears as though the artist has made the brush strokes from a variety of angles, creating random ridges of paint so that light falls on the surface of the canvas in an unpredictable way. Brian knows he could examine it for hours without feeling bored, if not for the subject.
When Justin warned him after they entered the studio, Brian had instantly made a mental list of what he expected to see articulated on canvas. The bashing. The Ian debacle. Dumpster boy. The cancer struggle. Babylon’s bombing. He knows he could’ve handled all of those. But this…
This is a 12-foot by 9-foot painting of Brian’s head and shoulders, and Brian is ugly. Not disfigured or demonic, but repulsive in a way he couldn’t imagine in nightmares. Here, he is himself, magnified and distilled a thousand times over, hiding nothing.
None of his features are exaggerated in shape-only in color and shadow. His face is a garish blend of orange, yellow, and green, with hundreds of brown flecks marking each pore. White highlights create the appearance of a thick surface layer of sweat. His few other blemishes-freckles, sun spots, tiny spider veins between one eyelid crease and the nose bridge-cause disruptions in the flow of vivid color in the surrounding area, drawing the viewer’s gaze to them over and over. The usual creases and early-stage wrinkles are so dark that the contrast makes them like painful splits in the skin. Based on the lighting alone, facial bones and muscles appear to bulge and atrophy in places. And, despite its expertly styled shape, his hair is a deadened mess of brown and black.
His voice wavers a little from the adrenaline in his system. “Justin, there is no way in hell I can stand by and watch other people scrutinize this, and see it sold to some random collector, or even showcased in printed reviews. I can’t, I won’t, whatever. No.”
“Okay. I understand.”
Brian wishes Justin would fight back, because maybe then this would hurt less for both of them.
8:57 pm, June 29, 2006. Hotel room.
Brian wants to fuck Justin for hours. He hates how disappointment bends Justin’s posture, how Justin’s effort to hold back all the conflicting thoughts makes his features settle into that grimly inexpressive mask. Brian wants him to lose awareness of anything but the sensations, the reverence, that Brian offers, and for him to come back to reality knowing all the things Brian isn’t sure how to explain. This has worked in the past, but he suspects it won’t now. Brian isn’t sure he can do enough for Justin to make this fucked up situation right again, and that scares Brian more than it makes him angry.
Justin accepts kisses willingly, wrapping his arms and legs around Brian’s body and moaning a little as Brian licks from his collarbone up the side of his neck to his earlobe. Brian shifts their positions to lick Justin’s hole, and Justin presses himself hard into the bed with the pleasure. Eventually, Brian puts on a condom and lubes his cock, lining himself up at Justin’s hole and rhythmically pressing inward, just enough to stretch the outer muscles but not enter him.
Normally, this would provoke Justin to push back onto Brian, sinking Brian’s cock far inside and forcing Justin to cry out as the head moves over his prostate. They would fuck with long, hard thrusts, until Justin’s couldn’t help the moisture welling in his eyes-not from emotion, but from sensory overload. He would wake up peaceful and with a little more perspective.
Tonight, however, Justin clenches hard-too hard-around Brian’s fingers as he prepares him. Brian tries another tactic, placing one finger ever so slightly off to the side of Justin’s prostate and waiting for Justin to arch enough that Brian’s finger will slide onto the spot in a blinding swell of sensation. Justin lets out a half-gasp, half-sob, and then he locks eyes with Brian.
Justin’s expression makes Brian stop, with his fingers still in Justin’s ass, and look at Justin for a very long time. It’s exactly what made Brian feel so powerless and out of place the night before the move to New York-the same resigned blankness, as though Justin has accepted his fate and silenced that part of himself that needs to speak up and fight back until things are right again, or at least better in some way.
A memory shoves its way into Brian’s mind.
“Why would you think that? ‘Cause you had a ball removed? ‘Cause you’re no longer perfect? Well believe me, Mr. Kinney, that is the least of your imperfections. And if I wanted to leave you, I’ve had better reasons--plenty of them.
--“Maybe you should have.”
“Yeah, maybe you’re right. But I thought we had a commitment, and I plan to stand by it.”
Sometimes Brian hates how life makes sense in a way that still confuses the fuck out of him.
He will go to the gallery; he has to. He’s just not sure whether he wants the painting to sell to the highest bidder, for thousands of dollars, or for it to be magically burnt down to a pile of ashes after an encounter with a wayward lit cigarette.
* * *
7:15 pm, July 2, 2006. The hotel room.
Years later, Justin will remember only short snippets of memories from that first night in the hotel room to the night after his first show.
How Brian stopped getting ready to fuck him and just pressed himself tightly up against him, one arm cradling Justin’s head and the other resting on his hip, until they both fell asleep.
How, the next afternoon, Justin didn’t ask questions as Brian put on his suit and called for the hotel car service to take them both to the gallery.
How Brian paced unobtrusively in front of each work of art except Justin’s, letting Justin take the time to be impressively intelligent yet down to Earth while he fielded questions and compliments from patrons and the odd critic or two.
Justin isn’t sure whether people made the connection between the painting and Brian himself; nobody seemed to react as if they had. Once Brian realized that, he walked back over and kept at least one hand resting easily on Justin’s shoulder or his arm for the remainder of the show.
And now it is done, and Justin pushes a copy of the newest edition of Art Forum across the table to Brian.
“Page 17.”
“Another review? Same guy as last time?” Brian’s eyebrow arches and he gives a wry grin; he is waiting to make a crack about the cunty critic who set this whole thing in motion. Still, Justin can hear the subtlest waver in Brian’s voice. This isn’t over yet.
“Actually, it’s a woman this time, and she doesn’t sound cunty. Weird, huh? Read it.”
Last Thursday, the Red Leaf Gallery, owned by Mrs. Connie Farris and Mr. James Rosemond, Sr., held it’s annual Summer Grande event. The gallery held an assortment of oversized works-glass and metal figures weighing in at over one ton each, a life-size recreation of a horse fashioned from antique chain links, and a twenty-foot hanging mobile holding pie tins and strings of rubber band loops, just to name a few. Each helped create a feeling of curiosity and almost playful discovery among the patrons, while simultaneously leading them to consider the more serious messages behind the visual forms and their raw materials.
A portrait by artist Justin Taylor proved especially captivating and thought-provoking for viewers. This 12-foot by 9-foot canvas is Mr. Taylor’s first piece to be shown in New York and is entitled “Resolution.” It depicts a man in such a hyperrealistic and vivid manner that his ordinary facial features appear grotesque, even though the nothing more than the colors and light values have been altered. At first glance, it seems that the artist intended to demean his subject with such a harsh portrayal, but then it becomes overwhelmingly clear that that is not the case. The man’s expression is weathered but open and confident, as if he has had to endure great hardship but somehow still retains his sense of self and security about his place in the world. He is mature and yet ageless, despite his appearance. He is unbreakable because he is entirely imperfect. I commend Mr. Taylor for creating such a powerful work in a unique style, and I eagerly await an opportunity to see more of his work. Based on the number of positive comments the gallery owners received about “Resolution,” and on its final selling price-several thousand dollars-I don’t believe I’ll have to wait too long.
A clay sculpture by artist Nicole Watchman offers a similarly complex, fascinating rendering of its subject…
They stand at the window, enjoying the distant hum of city noise and how the high-rise buildings, lit from within, offer light as the sun recedes. Once dusk has passed, Justin eases himself onto the bed and spreads his legs open, waiting.
Twenty minutes later, Brian pushes into Justin, rocking him with steady thrusts that fill them both with heat. Justin holds his gaze through orgasm, his eyes alive with desire and playfulness and not a hint of uncertainty. He waits for the moment right before they descend into sleep, breathing in unison, feeling trust and comfort carry them forward into what will come later.
Things are all right between them, now.
* * *
Written By: silent_seas
Timeline: Starts the night before Justin’s departure for NYC and ends about 18 months later.
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: A little angst, but it gets better.
Summary: Justin makes an unusual work of art that changes his relationship with Brian.
Author Notes: My first fic of any kind. I apologize if it sucks.
12:50 pm, November 8, 2005. Pittsburgh airport.
Justin hates the way airplanes smell.
He had hopes when he decided to move to New York, but those ideas feel uncomfortably remote once he finds seat 24B and takes a breath. And fuck no, he does not regret refusing Brian’s offer of a first class ticket. Not even when the edge of the seat starts digging into the backs of his knees after only 15 minutes of waiting for the boarding process to finish.
They shouldn’t really call it a process, though; this is menwomenchildrenluggagepets, one big crush inside a steel tube. Like a goddamn can of Pringles, with the chips set in a row before being sealed inside. With the stale air.
Except that after the plane is empty again, there won’t be people-fragments lying in a little pile in the back row, and the passengers probably won’t get eaten, and he is stopping this train of thought absolutely right now, before the balding businessman in seat 24A can realize he has unwittingly booked a flight next to an artistic twentysomething madman. Or mad twink. Whatever.
Justin needs a drink, but he doesn’t order one. He rubs a (purposely non-teenager-ish) shoe back and forth over the carpet, struggling to make his mind stop spewing run-on nonsense and frustration over things that haven’t happened yet.
He wonders if he’ll be one of the very few people whose life in New York starts off better than anticipated. He isn’t sure if that would make him lucky to avoid the disillusionment, or if it would just prove how damn cynical he can be. Oh well.
* * *
Justin arrives at the new apartment to find stacks of his boxes…and a perfectly made bed covered with what has to be the softest, warmest blue blanket ever. There’s a note on the pillow. Two words:
Love,
Daphne
He turns it over and reads the rest,
…and in case you’re wondering, this was all my own idea. Call me sometime, k.
Justin smiles; that last sentence is not a question. And if Brian had thought of the bed, his note would’ve made the same point, only it would’ve taken him at least one obvious sexual innuendo and possibly a lot of sarcasm.
Five minutes later:
“Hi Brian, I thought I’d call you when I got in, and I’m in my apartment now. Daphne got her friend to make up the bed for me, and she got me an awesome blanket, which is cool. And you’re right, it was stupid of me to refuse that first-class seat, even if it is a really short flight. Well, it wasn’t too bad actually, kind of relaxing. But not at the beginning, that sucked. And don’t even try telling me you’ve done anything today besides lay in bed and smoke. It won’t work.”
Brian uses his best mock-innocent tone of voice.
"I think I may be imagining this whole conversation. Or perhaps I’m not and you’re seriously lacking in some kind of logic at the moment...What the hell did they give you on the plane, and why do I always end up with pretzels instead of that?”
Justin giggles tiny bit. “Nothing but water. Hey, cool, you dream about me. Or you might. Do I top you?”
Oh shit. Justin wants to know when and why he reverted to a babble-prone 17 year-old, and whether the condition is permanent this time. Shit. He momentarily searches for a way to recover the conversation, but then he reminds himself that he seems to be in an ohmigod I’m living in New York City and I’m by myself with no job mind warp-and that Brian knows Justin can be more mature than this. He will be.
But that leads to thoughts of how they had fucked the night before, the undercurrents to every movement, the new things they had not-said and just done instead…Justin can’t, won’t revisit that. Not now. He stammers,
“Hey, sorry. I’m a little looped here. What I meant to say is…What are you wearing?”
The words sound painfully distracted, and Brian doesn’t turn the conversation to sex. A long pause drifts up between them. Justin can feel Brian straining to say something, fighting habit and distance and uncertainty. Right as Justin starts to worry, he hears the clink-scritch of Brian’s lighter, and then,
“Mikey pitched a fit over losing the promo posters for the first edition of some lame new comic. Lightning Rod Avengers, or the Man with Five Independently-Rotating Heads, or some shit like that."
Things melt a little between them.
Justin doesn’t picture Brian at all this time, despite knowing the exact few positions Brian falls into when lying on the bed to talk on the phone and smoke. Instead, Justin concentrates on Brian’s voice and the way he occasionally clears his throat between breaths.
Despite his honed awareness of visual form and the human body, there are so many elements of Brian that Justin cannot instinctively understand and recreate. He spends his time focusing on those things, knowing the rest will happen naturally.
* * *
Justin doesn’t exactly lack intelligence or self-esteem, but there are times when he feels fucking stupid.
Like on the Tuesday after he moves to New York, when he buys a 12-foot by 9-foot canvas without realizing it won’t actually fit in the door to the apartment. The building door, not just the opening to his room. But this is good, because he ends up walking all over the neighborhood to look for an actual workspace or a place to stash the canvas, whichever comes first.
He meets a group of people outside a convenience store. The least shifty of the three guys asks,
“You’re an artist, right?”
“Huh?”
“You have six flecks of yellow paint inside your left ear.”
“Umm, ok. What do you do?”
“Photographer.”
“You do photographers, or you are one?” Justin doesn’t really want to know, but this is technically his first multi-sentence exchange with a New Yorker, so he figures he shouldn’t just walk away. Yet.
The guy cracks a smile. “Right, there would be a difference. Osmosis doesn’t really apply to talent. And if you think about it, we’re all lucky that fucking doesn’t involve that much osmosis. It’s diffusion, if anything. Since we’re not made entirely of wa-”
Half a second later and four very large steps away, Justin hears the nutjob photographer call after him,
“Hey, you’re new here. You need a studio?”
* * *
8:13 pm, November 7, 2005. The loft.
Despite all their past drama, Brian is unprepared for how much he hates this. Justin is...wrong. Distracted and resigned and so unnervingly blank and still. Not-Justin. There is intermittent talking-about studio space, survival, time-but no matter how Justin looks at him, Brian feels like a life-size cardboard cutout wobbling in the center of an empty room. He sips a drink and fights to keep the corners of his mouth from turning downward, but they do anyway. Later, the kissing and sex is the closest thing Brian will ever feel to an act of prayer, of worship, and he falls apart a little more.
11:42 pm, November 7, 2005.
Brian holds out a condom, turns onto his stomach, and slowly spreads his legs wide. He can hear that Justin’s answering gasp has nothing to do with sex.
“Hello, flight reservation desk? I’d like to change my departure time. La Guardia, flight 2704. 12:50 pm instead of 10:00 am. Yes, I have my credit card info…"
Then Justin spreads himself out over Brian and lets Brian’s breathing set their rhythm. Justin fucks him with subtle rolls of his hips so intense and smooth that both of them can barely breathe. Orgasm is silent, too-a deep, unwinding shiver that seems to take forever to fade.
Eventually, Brian manages to turn his head and give Justin a gaze that means, “If I ask you to do that again any time in the next 8 hours, I wouldn’t mind if you accidentally acquiesced, but it would probably be safer for both of us if you assume I’m delusional and tell me to shut the fuck up.”
But then he actually says that out loud, too.
“Huh?”
Brian nods, “Exactly.”
“Um, Brian, I don’t think I need to mention that you are verging on what is typically called post-coital babble, do I?”
Silence.
Justin skips the opportunity to gloat. Instead, he speaks into the soft hair that rests behind Brian’s ear and curls down onto his neck.
“Sleep. I’m here. I’ll be here in the morning.”
But Brian won’t remember the goodbye kiss in bed, the one with his arm still instinctively pushed over his face to keep the morning light out of his eyes. He won’t fully wake until it’s dark again, and he’ll be grateful for missing those first hours of empty loft and constant, dull ache.
* * *
9:35 pm, January 22, 2006. Justin’s apartment.
Justin wonders why all the really big, pivotal ideas happen when he’s supposed to be paying attention to something else. Brian proposed, and Justin realized he needed to go live in New York. Daphne calls for the first time in months, and he finally figures out what to put on that big-ass canvas.
The tone of her voice sinks in-upbeat, curious, and a bit gossipy, as usual-but none of the words do, because he can picture exactly how the painting will look when finished, and holy shit, it scares him. This is bad. And possibly very good for his career.
“Justin!!”
“Wha-Oh, sorry. I kinda zoned out. I need to get to my studio.”
“You know, since Van Gogh cut off his own ear, I’m pretty sure he was a crazy freak, but I’m thinking he could still hold a conversation.”
Justin can feel her teasing smile, and he relaxes a bit.
“You were right, New York really has made you all discombobulated. You should go visit Brian for a while. No talking necessary there.”
“Actually…”
That scared feeling moves through him again.
10:18 am, January 23, 2006. The studio.
A car horn drones as traffic speeds through the intersection several floors below, and Justin wakes up. He tries to stand, but something tugs on his shirt and holds him down. His hands move over the fabric, over the smooth, cold surface beneath him, and finally to the edge of something pressing across the front of his thighs. Trying again, a dull ripping noise tells him he has pulled free, and he rubs his face to regain his bearings.
He had fallen asleep on his canvas.
Incongruous smears in the lower part of the painting form the shape of his torso and arms, and an oval smudge shows where the weight of his head rested. From a distance, it looks like a human figure has melted through the composition, leaving behind only subtle distortions in line and shading.
For a moment, Justin considers redoing that area, but as his gaze moves over the whole canvas to take in the colors and the design, he knows he shouldn’t.
The painting is finished, and he can feel that something in him has changed.
* * *
7:00 pm, May 19, 2006. Kinnetik.
Brian turns away from his laptop to grab his cell phone. It’s Justin’s ringtone. Brian answers before he can think about why he might not want to.
“Justin.”
“Hi, Brian. Are you busy at the moment?”
“No, why?”
A pause. Then, “Remember how I’ve been taking samples of my recent work to some galleries around here? I haven’t ended up with any major offers yet, but I did get one painting into a summer show. I figured you’d want to hear about it.”
“You assumed correctly. Congratulations, Justin. Told you that you would be a success.”
“Not there yet, but this is a good start.”
“When’s the show?”
“June 30th, but I think you might want to fly up here a day in advance. You should see this thing before other people do.”
Brian nearly makes a comment about celebratory fucking, but the serious edge in Justin’s voice stops him. There’s something Justin wants him to know.
“I can be there on the 29th , not a problem.”
Justin changes the subject to Kinnetik’s latest campaigns, and then to Gus and Michael. Brian asks about the city, the apartment-mate, and Justin’s decision to take shifts at a bookstore and a deli until he can find better work.
Afterwards, Brian reviews the whole thing in his head, surprised that talking was so easy this time. Justin had seemed different, too, but not in the way that has bothered him since he left Pittsburgh. Today, Justin was focused, quiet without seeming disconnected. Himself again, perhaps…but more than that.
Later that night, Brian calls Justin from the loft. They have another easy conversation, about some horrendously campy movie Michael and Brian saw last weekend. Brian strokes himself the whole time, too softly to lead to anything.
* * *
1:46 pm, June 29, 2006. LaGuardia airport.
Brian walks off the plane, into the terminal, past the security gates, and he doesn’t see Justin waiting for him. When he scans over the faces in the room several more times to no avail, he has a moment of panic, and maybe a little anger. But then he feels Justin wrapping his arms around him from behind, almost breathing him in.
When he turns around and Justin moves to kiss him, Brian pushes firmly on his shoulders and stops him. He brushes a thumb over the side of Justin’s face and looks at him with the briefest hint of playfulness. Wait, it says. Not here.
Given that Brian has a hotel room for his visit (a huge, cushy bed with Justin in it, more specifically) they compromise on taking a cab instead of a limo from the airport. Justin gives the address for his studio instead of the hotel, but Brian doesn’t feel like asking why. He leans his head on top of Justin’s for the trip, letting Justin’s scent soothe the unusual nervous excitement crackling through him. Cigarettes, sweat, cologne, and that other unidentifiable, ever-present thing. A wave of comfort and familiarity hits Brian and makes him feel incredibly drowsy, but a moment later Justin opens the cab door, and the city’s energy rushes back upon him.
3:30 pm, June 29, 2006.
A huge, covered canvas looms up along the studio’s entire left wall. Brian is surprised how intimidating it seems, which naturally means he must walk directly over to it and brush a hand over the cloth. To come close and touch something is to make it ordinary, understandable, within his control. Subconsciously, he knows that despite their years together, a part of Justin will always remain free and unpredictable-entirely separate from Brian-and this is why Brian will never lose interest.
Justin looks directly at him and speaks with a determined calm that makes Brian hard. “I know it’s a lot to ask, but you might want to take some time before you tell me what you think of it. This is different from anything else I’ve done.”
“Well, I’m sure it’s still geniu-”
The cover falls away from the painting mid-sentence, and Brian is utterly lost. He can feel his face turning a strong shade of pink, and at first he’s not sure if it’s from embarrassment, anger, or both. This can’t be real. This can’t be Justin’s, his gigantic twelve by nine masterpiece being shown to the entire fucking world in two days.
Oh fuck. No…fuck him. It’s too much.
Time passes in silence. Justin looks only at Brian, not at the painting. Brian leans up against the studio door, facing a window.
When Brian starts to feel a bit more grounded, he takes another look at the canvas, and a bit of his mother flares up in him.
How dare he put this in a gallery! Why did he do this? Couldn’t he have choosen something else? If this painting is the reason why Justin stopped acting so..lost, what does that mean? Is this some twisted way for him to say he doesn’t want me anymore?
But then he remembers Justin asking him to come to New York early, to see the thing before the showing. A deep breath, and then he forces himself to examine it more closely, like he would any of Justin’s work.
Color explodes from every part of the composition, hundreds of different hues overlaid in wide arcs, arrays of shapes, and swipes that make the canvas seem to pulse with a life of its own. Even the shadows vary in shades of brown, purple, red, green, blue…It appears as though the artist has made the brush strokes from a variety of angles, creating random ridges of paint so that light falls on the surface of the canvas in an unpredictable way. Brian knows he could examine it for hours without feeling bored, if not for the subject.
When Justin warned him after they entered the studio, Brian had instantly made a mental list of what he expected to see articulated on canvas. The bashing. The Ian debacle. Dumpster boy. The cancer struggle. Babylon’s bombing. He knows he could’ve handled all of those. But this…
This is a 12-foot by 9-foot painting of Brian’s head and shoulders, and Brian is ugly. Not disfigured or demonic, but repulsive in a way he couldn’t imagine in nightmares. Here, he is himself, magnified and distilled a thousand times over, hiding nothing.
None of his features are exaggerated in shape-only in color and shadow. His face is a garish blend of orange, yellow, and green, with hundreds of brown flecks marking each pore. White highlights create the appearance of a thick surface layer of sweat. His few other blemishes-freckles, sun spots, tiny spider veins between one eyelid crease and the nose bridge-cause disruptions in the flow of vivid color in the surrounding area, drawing the viewer’s gaze to them over and over. The usual creases and early-stage wrinkles are so dark that the contrast makes them like painful splits in the skin. Based on the lighting alone, facial bones and muscles appear to bulge and atrophy in places. And, despite its expertly styled shape, his hair is a deadened mess of brown and black.
His voice wavers a little from the adrenaline in his system. “Justin, there is no way in hell I can stand by and watch other people scrutinize this, and see it sold to some random collector, or even showcased in printed reviews. I can’t, I won’t, whatever. No.”
“Okay. I understand.”
Brian wishes Justin would fight back, because maybe then this would hurt less for both of them.
8:57 pm, June 29, 2006. Hotel room.
Brian wants to fuck Justin for hours. He hates how disappointment bends Justin’s posture, how Justin’s effort to hold back all the conflicting thoughts makes his features settle into that grimly inexpressive mask. Brian wants him to lose awareness of anything but the sensations, the reverence, that Brian offers, and for him to come back to reality knowing all the things Brian isn’t sure how to explain. This has worked in the past, but he suspects it won’t now. Brian isn’t sure he can do enough for Justin to make this fucked up situation right again, and that scares Brian more than it makes him angry.
Justin accepts kisses willingly, wrapping his arms and legs around Brian’s body and moaning a little as Brian licks from his collarbone up the side of his neck to his earlobe. Brian shifts their positions to lick Justin’s hole, and Justin presses himself hard into the bed with the pleasure. Eventually, Brian puts on a condom and lubes his cock, lining himself up at Justin’s hole and rhythmically pressing inward, just enough to stretch the outer muscles but not enter him.
Normally, this would provoke Justin to push back onto Brian, sinking Brian’s cock far inside and forcing Justin to cry out as the head moves over his prostate. They would fuck with long, hard thrusts, until Justin’s couldn’t help the moisture welling in his eyes-not from emotion, but from sensory overload. He would wake up peaceful and with a little more perspective.
Tonight, however, Justin clenches hard-too hard-around Brian’s fingers as he prepares him. Brian tries another tactic, placing one finger ever so slightly off to the side of Justin’s prostate and waiting for Justin to arch enough that Brian’s finger will slide onto the spot in a blinding swell of sensation. Justin lets out a half-gasp, half-sob, and then he locks eyes with Brian.
Justin’s expression makes Brian stop, with his fingers still in Justin’s ass, and look at Justin for a very long time. It’s exactly what made Brian feel so powerless and out of place the night before the move to New York-the same resigned blankness, as though Justin has accepted his fate and silenced that part of himself that needs to speak up and fight back until things are right again, or at least better in some way.
A memory shoves its way into Brian’s mind.
“Why would you think that? ‘Cause you had a ball removed? ‘Cause you’re no longer perfect? Well believe me, Mr. Kinney, that is the least of your imperfections. And if I wanted to leave you, I’ve had better reasons--plenty of them.
--“Maybe you should have.”
“Yeah, maybe you’re right. But I thought we had a commitment, and I plan to stand by it.”
Sometimes Brian hates how life makes sense in a way that still confuses the fuck out of him.
He will go to the gallery; he has to. He’s just not sure whether he wants the painting to sell to the highest bidder, for thousands of dollars, or for it to be magically burnt down to a pile of ashes after an encounter with a wayward lit cigarette.
* * *
7:15 pm, July 2, 2006. The hotel room.
Years later, Justin will remember only short snippets of memories from that first night in the hotel room to the night after his first show.
How Brian stopped getting ready to fuck him and just pressed himself tightly up against him, one arm cradling Justin’s head and the other resting on his hip, until they both fell asleep.
How, the next afternoon, Justin didn’t ask questions as Brian put on his suit and called for the hotel car service to take them both to the gallery.
How Brian paced unobtrusively in front of each work of art except Justin’s, letting Justin take the time to be impressively intelligent yet down to Earth while he fielded questions and compliments from patrons and the odd critic or two.
Justin isn’t sure whether people made the connection between the painting and Brian himself; nobody seemed to react as if they had. Once Brian realized that, he walked back over and kept at least one hand resting easily on Justin’s shoulder or his arm for the remainder of the show.
And now it is done, and Justin pushes a copy of the newest edition of Art Forum across the table to Brian.
“Page 17.”
“Another review? Same guy as last time?” Brian’s eyebrow arches and he gives a wry grin; he is waiting to make a crack about the cunty critic who set this whole thing in motion. Still, Justin can hear the subtlest waver in Brian’s voice. This isn’t over yet.
“Actually, it’s a woman this time, and she doesn’t sound cunty. Weird, huh? Read it.”
Last Thursday, the Red Leaf Gallery, owned by Mrs. Connie Farris and Mr. James Rosemond, Sr., held it’s annual Summer Grande event. The gallery held an assortment of oversized works-glass and metal figures weighing in at over one ton each, a life-size recreation of a horse fashioned from antique chain links, and a twenty-foot hanging mobile holding pie tins and strings of rubber band loops, just to name a few. Each helped create a feeling of curiosity and almost playful discovery among the patrons, while simultaneously leading them to consider the more serious messages behind the visual forms and their raw materials.
A portrait by artist Justin Taylor proved especially captivating and thought-provoking for viewers. This 12-foot by 9-foot canvas is Mr. Taylor’s first piece to be shown in New York and is entitled “Resolution.” It depicts a man in such a hyperrealistic and vivid manner that his ordinary facial features appear grotesque, even though the nothing more than the colors and light values have been altered. At first glance, it seems that the artist intended to demean his subject with such a harsh portrayal, but then it becomes overwhelmingly clear that that is not the case. The man’s expression is weathered but open and confident, as if he has had to endure great hardship but somehow still retains his sense of self and security about his place in the world. He is mature and yet ageless, despite his appearance. He is unbreakable because he is entirely imperfect. I commend Mr. Taylor for creating such a powerful work in a unique style, and I eagerly await an opportunity to see more of his work. Based on the number of positive comments the gallery owners received about “Resolution,” and on its final selling price-several thousand dollars-I don’t believe I’ll have to wait too long.
A clay sculpture by artist Nicole Watchman offers a similarly complex, fascinating rendering of its subject…
They stand at the window, enjoying the distant hum of city noise and how the high-rise buildings, lit from within, offer light as the sun recedes. Once dusk has passed, Justin eases himself onto the bed and spreads his legs open, waiting.
Twenty minutes later, Brian pushes into Justin, rocking him with steady thrusts that fill them both with heat. Justin holds his gaze through orgasm, his eyes alive with desire and playfulness and not a hint of uncertainty. He waits for the moment right before they descend into sleep, breathing in unison, feeling trust and comfort carry them forward into what will come later.
Things are all right between them, now.
* * *