Entry #06 - "Coda" (2 of 2)
Title: Coda
Written By: a_short_detour
Timeline: Post Season 5
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: None
Genre A little Angst, a little Romance, a little tying up of loose ends
Coda
IV. What New York Couples Fight About
Justin sleeps, and dreams in shades of blue. Shadows dance at the edges of his spotlight, but they’re shuffled out of sight as soon as they appear by the hand of the puppeteer above him, the one directing the shots.
He’s been here before.
He knows this.
Where? Where has he been?
Where is he going? Where is here?
Time shifts, the fabric of time folds around him, cool and silk-smooth, caressing his eyes, his forehead, slipping down over his arms before it falls to the floor and melts away. He’s there and not there, watching the scene, living it. He’s standing, smiling, his heart trapped under a bow tie.
Room full of eighteen-year-olds. Brian and a room full of eighteen-year-olds and an old song and a spotlight.
Spin. Step, step step, pull back, twirl, spot, return.
Dip back, low, grinning.
Look into a pair of dark green eyes and see things he will never say and know things he will never learn and feel twelve and giddy and ancient and wise.
Squeal just slightly and feel lifted, fluid, meet his lips as he returns to Earth.
Dance through a parking lot, catch his hand. Know he will never let go, not really, leave him leaning against his Jeep and walk away humming, white silk scarf cool around careless hands.
Justin. Turn, send a smile back to him, something displaces air and peripheral vision and game over.
He snaps awake, struggling to breathe, and imagines Brian touching his shoulder, gently, telling him to inhale, then exhale, there’s a good boy, keep doing that. The calm comes slowly, overtakes him piece by piece until his heart slows and he stops shaking long enough to pull his covers back over himself and curl up in bed. What was that? he thinks, though he knows what it was. Even as his brain struggles to process it, process a vague spot of not there that is now very much there, he’s reaching for his phone, flipping it open, dialing Brian.
Brian answers after two heart-stopping rings. “Hey,” he says when he picks up.
“Hey,” says Justin. He’s not sure how to continue the conversation. He and Brian have never been good at talking over the phone, have always been far too tactile to communicate well with a disembodied voice miles away. “I was just calling to check in.”
Brian doesn’t respond for a second. “Everything all right?” he asks.
No, Justin wants to say. No, everything is not all right. You told me it didn’t matter how long we were apart, that it was only time, but it fucking matters. You come up here for the stupid shit, for gallery openings and to fuck me when you can’t get enough in Pittsburgh, but you never stay. Daylight comes and you’re gone.
“When are you coming up again?” he asks instead.
“Don’t know yet,” says Brian. “I have a lot to get done here, business.”
He’s hedging, which would piss Justin off except he can’t muster the energy for anger right now. “Just make it soon,” he says. Soon, he thinks, or not at all. I can’t keep doing this, this thing where we don’t talk until you sneak up here for a weekend and we fuck and it’s like normal and then you go back and we don’t speak for another month. He quashes the line of thought. “I sold a painting last week.”
“Always told you they’d be clamoring for your work.”
“Clamoring might be a little strong. It’s New York. Everyone’s showing stuff to the same market, and we’re all a lot of really small fish in a fucking huge pond.”
“Tell me that in ten years when Taylor originals go for thousands.”
Justin smiles despite himself, feels his chest begin to unclench. “It’s afternoon,” he says. “I should’ve been up hours ago.”
“As I recall,” Brian says, “you’re always up in the mornings.”
“It’s been a long time,” Justin says in response. He can’t remember the last time he fucked someone other than Brian, though he must have picked up at least a few tricks in his visits to the clubs. But they’re shadows in comparison, faceless bodies that begin to fade even before he comes, distil into nebulous ideas of shoulders and hips and thighs and cocks. He could pass them on the street, have conversations with them, work with them, and never recognize them.
“You never know when I might drop in,” Brian says. Justin can see himself as a twenty-year-old to whom those words would have meant the world, to whom they would have meant love and commitment and joy. Now, they mean nothing, mean a shrivelled half-promise that Brian will never acknowledge.
That Brian acknowledged once, five years and a lifetime ago, at a stupid fucking teenaged rite of passage, before a dancefloor covered with Justin’s classmates and best friend and worst enemy.
“I don’t know how much longer I can do this,” Justin hears himself say. “I don’t know whether I can keep pretending not seeing you doesn’t matter.” Because once, remembering what had happened at his prom would have made all the difference, but now he’s an adult and he needs more than an eighteen-year-old with a crush.
And then he thinks, fuck it, and says, “I dreamed about the prom. I remember it.”
“Fuck,” says Brian. Then, “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine. I just thought I should tell you.” Justin knows something that Brian has never told him about that night, and it’s that Brian died. Not that he almost strangled himself playing with scarfing (dumbass that he is, it had probably never occurred to him to think about the people he’d have left behind), but that he had laid it all on the line, smiled at Justin with open eyes, and ten minutes later knelt on the oily floor of the parking lot dialing and ambulance with trembling, blood-slicked fingers.
Daphne described Brian’s reaction in detail once Justin woke from his coma. The paramedics had almost had to sedate him, she said, because he was so convinced Justin was dead and refused to let go. She had taken Brian’s cell phone from unresisting fingers and dialed Michael, told him to meet them at the hospital. At the scene, as they watched from the sidelines, Brian kept telling her that it was his fault, his own fucking fault for showing up and giving Chris fucking Hobbs reason to use that baseball bat. That he had given something, released something to Justin for safekeeping, and watched as one swing obliterated it.
Suddenly, Justin is furious. “Why the fuck didn’t you tell me?” he demands. “You didn’t tell me shit about that night, just that we danced, and that you knew why Debbie calls me Sunshine. Bullshit. You told me nothing important, nothing that might actually mean you’d have to open up to me for another thirty seconds. Everyone,” his voice cracks, but he presses on, resolute, “everyone knew, except for me. Everyone knew what we said, and how we looked at each other, and which song was playing, except me. And you never told me.”
“I--”
“Don’t start,” Justin says. “Just...don’t even. Don’t start. I could have died in Babylon that night with the bomb, and I never would have known. Because you didn’t tell me.”
“And what? You think I don’t fucking know that? You think I asked you to marry me for the hell of it, because I wanted to settle down with a nice girl and carry on the Kinney line?”
“No,” says Justin. “I think you asked me to marry you because you thought it was the only way you could own me enough.”
“The fuck is that supposed to mean?” Brain growls.
“That you can’t let go. That the reason we stay together is because you can’t let me go, and the reason you’re not here is that you can’t fucking let go of Pittsburgh and your worshipful court. I have friends here, you know, friends that are mine and didn’t come packaged with the guy I was fucking, and I’m selling my art and paying for my own apartment and it’s working out. And if you wanted me, you’d be here by now.”
Justin sucks in a deep breath, poised to continue, but Brian interrupts, almost inaudibly, “Maybe you’re right.”
There’s no real response to that. Justin is prepared to try his hand at it anyway when he realizes that a dial tone is coming from the other end of the connection.
Fine, he thinks, and calls Aaron.
“Taylor, my man,” says Aaron when he answers. “I hear you’ve got some of this new invention called spending money. What say you we hit the bars tonight and I steal the peanuts while you distract the bartenders?”
Justin smiles, because he can’t help himself around Aaron, pretty much ever, and says, “I was thinking more about hitting the bars in twenty minutes.”
“Ouch,” says Aaron. “You realize it’s barely four and you were up until the wee hours of the morning last night? Ever think of letting your body get over the shit you put in it before you drag it out again?”
“Or,” says Justin, “I can do it myself.”
“Twenty minutes,” Aaron says.
--
Brian sets the phone down, takes deep breaths and carefully closes off his mind as he wanders the loft deciding what to take on his impromptu trip.
Once, he knows, the argument would have convinced him not to go. Now, it simply reinforces his conviction to leave.
He trails a finger over the ticket on the counter and then retreats to his bedroom to pack.
V. Paper Boats
Justin lost track of time three bars ago, and he tosses back another shot of something that’s maybe vodka but he doesn’t care because it burns in the good way that means it will make his head throb in the morning. He’s what they generally call shitfaced, and he doesn’t give a fuck.
Minutes or hours or days later, he finds himself staring at his reflection in the bar bathroom, examining the shifting shape of his face as it drifts in and out of focus. The world is spinning a little, and he’s not sure he likes the sensation because anyone knows the world works a lot better when it stays in one place.
“Taylor,” Aaron says. “Hey, Justin, let’s get you home.”
“Home?” Justin asks. “Home’s a fucking shoebox with a mattress.”
”Home is someplace where you can puke in relative quiet and not in this shithole basement bathroom.”
He’s steering Justin now, and Justin can feel it, and he doesn’t really care except before he knows it they’re at the stairs and he doesn’t know how the fuck he’s going to get to the top of the flight.
Aaron seems to sense his distress. “Just take it one step at a time,” he says, and if Justin were in full command of his faculties he’d make a mental note to thank whoever taught Aaron to deal with hopelessly wasted men. “One step at a time,” Aaron repeats. “One step at a time.”
“One step at a time,” Justin echoes, lifting his right foot, which is suddenly located eight or nine miles away from his body, and setting it down on the first stair. Or what he thinks is the first stair--his toe catches only the edge of the metal before it slips off again and he stumbles back against Aaron.
“Can’t do it,” he whimpers, burying his face in Aaron’s shirt. “Don’t wanna. Can’t.”
“Oh, for Christ’s sake, Justin. Pull yourself together and walk up the goddamn stairs.”
“I can’t, I’m not...I can’t. Can’t do shit, Aaron, can’t do fucking anything right, can’t walk up the--can’t.”
Aaron pushes him back but catches him before he can trip over his own feet. “Listen to me,” he says. “You don’t get to talk like that. For a lot of reasons. First, because you’re drunk off your ass and that never leads to anything good except sometimes getting laid; second, because you can do stuff--you’re an artist, remember? And the only reason you’re this wasted right now is that someone bought your paintings, meaning you had money to waste on drinks. So don’t give me that shit--just walk up the stairs.”
“But I can’t do this,” Justin says, getting into it, deciding he might cry in a few minutes just for the hell of making someone care, making Aaron care enough to hug him or tell him he’ll be all right.
Maybe Aaron senses the need, because he stops talking, steps forward, and catches Justin in a warm embrace that forces him out of his self-pity and back into the real world, where he has a bitch of a headache, no good recollection of how he came to be in the basement of a nameless bar, and a strong urge to vomit.
“I’mma throw up,” he mumbles, and staggers back into the bathroom, where he empties his stomach while Aaron makes exasperated sounds and tells him how much of a dumbass he is and runs gentle, cool fingers through the hair at the back of his neck.
--
A greasy drizzle coats New York by the time Brian catches a cab at the airport and gives the driver Justin’s address. The cabbie eyes him with a quick questioning glance, as if wondering what a man with expensive luggage and a nice suit is doing traveling anywhere but the upper half of the island, but thankfully he says nothing. Without comment, he navigates to the apartment building, takes Brian’s money, and wishes him a good evening before driving away.
This sucks ass, Brian thinks two hours later, when he’s still huddled in the front doorway of Justin’s building, shivering, careful not to allow the filthy rain that has slid down the brick façade drip on his jacket. It’s only nine o’clock and Justin isn’t picking up his cell phone.
He doesn’t know where Justin is. It sort of scares the shit out of him.
Justin has a life here, he has bars and clubs and friends and Brian knows almost nothing of it. Doesn’t know where to start looking, even, has no idea where Justin could be at this hour.
He pulls his cell phone out again, dials Justin’s number.
“Hey, you’ve reached Justin’s cell, please leave a message.” Beep.
“Justin,” Brian says. “Would you, I’m out here. I’m in town. Stuck outside your apartment--how about letting me in?”
Hanging up, he huffs out a sigh of frustration and sits on his luggage, keeping a casual eye on the suspicious group of young men down the street and scanning for Justin.
Three girls step down the sidewalk together, their heels clicking in a quick staccato as they hurry, eyes downcast, toward their destination. An old man sits on a stoop across the way, his tattered jacket wrapped tightly around his shoulders. And around the corner stagger two young men, the taller, dark-haired one supporting someone who looks remarkably like--
“Justin,” Brian says, fighting off an initial bout of panic. He’s probably just drunk, not mugged or hurt or sick, but Brian’s moving faster than necessary, leaving his suitcase and not bothering with his umbrella.
“Justin,” he says again, once he’s within range. “Justin, what the fuck?”
“’m just a little wasted,” Justin says, illustrating his idea of little by holding up one hand, thumb and forefinger slightly separated.
“I’m Aaron,” says the boy bent under Justin’s body weight. “I’m guessing you’re Brian.”
Brian spares him a two-second glance, nods, and returns his attention to Justin, who is now attempting to slide quietly to the pavement.
“Give me your keys,” Brian says. “Let’s get him in.”
It’s a challenge, but they make it, somehow stuff Justin and Aaron and Brian and Brian’s belongings into an elevator the size of a small armoire. Somehow dig Justin’s keys out of his pocket, open his door, and maneuver him into bed.
“I think he’s done puking for the night,” Aaron says, “but I’d keep an eye on him. You know, in case something happens.”
Brian nods wordlessly and shows Aaron out before turning to remove Justin’s clothing as well as his own and sliding into bed, wrapping an arm around Justin’s waist. “You idiot,” he says. “What the fuck are you trying to prove?”
“You knew,” Justin mumbles. “You knew you were coming and you didn’t tell me. Asshole.”
“Yell at me tomorrow,” Brian says. “Go to sleep. You’re fucking drunk and it’s not even late. Knew you needed me up here to keep you out of trouble.”
“Keep me out of trouble,” Justin says into his pillow. “You need me to keep you out of trouble.”
“I think in this case the facts clearly demonstrate--”
Justin’s snore cuts off the rest of what Brian had intended to say.
--
Justin nearly screams the next morning when his alarm wakes him by stabbing a fucking switchblade through one of his eye sockets and, for good measure, twisting a little. “Fuck,” he mutters, and sends a groping hand out in pursuit of the little shit, knocking it off the bedside table and knocking it, still tweeting, to the floor. He seriously contemplates leaving it there to rot in peace, better for the world that way, when a herd of elephants approaches, stops, and screams at him. Groaning, he covers his ears, rolls into a tight ball, and mutters something like, “Fuck off, Brian.”
Brian unfolds him by poking him not too gently in the ribs, screaming something else, and then stampeding to what serves as the kitchen, where he creates a hurricane of coffee- and toast-making sounds. The noise becomes tolerable after a few minutes, so Justin opens his eyes, carefully, stands up just as carefully, steps into a pair of sweatpants, and shuffles his way towards the noise. “What happened?” he mumbles.
It’s unfair how Brian can look like a fucking underwear model even when he’s just gotten out of bed, and when he grins Justin feels a strong urge to smack him. Or kiss him. Or, you know, both. “Do you remember anything of last night?” Brian asks, that fucking smirk still on his face.
“If I remembered, would I ask you?” He’s not in the mood for Brian’s fucking I-know-something-you-don’t games, and he wants to know whether he should keep his standing appointment at the clinic or go in for an extra test like, this afternoon.
Speaking of which, in a roundabout way, why is Brian here at all? The last clear memory he has is of arguing, then of calling Aaron to go bar-hopping. Which clearly worked out, because the ache that suffuses his body can only be attributed to a night of overenthusiastic indulgence. “When did you get here?” he asks around the swollen cotton ball that is his tongue.
“Last night, around nine,” Brian says. The toaster pops, for once without also tripping the circuit, and he drops it onto a plate, pours Justin a mug of coffee, and hands them over.
Justin sets the food on the card table beside his sink and settles onto a chair. Taking a sip of coffee, he winces at the sting of the bitter hot liquid. He picks at the crust of the toast, and tries again. “Why are you here?”
“Decided there wasn’t anything left for me in the Pitts.”
There’s nothing to hold onto in that statement, nowhere to begin with it. It explains everything and nothing, creates as many questions as it supplies answers, and Justin simply doesn’t have the energy to argue. So he shrugs and says, “Fuck me.”
Clearly, this is a request that Brian can both interpret and respond to correctly, because before Justin is quite aware what’s happened, he’s on his back in his bed, gasping for breath between kisses, Brian’s body stretched taut above him, between his splayed legs. “Fuck,” Justin says, his voice rasping. “Fuck, keep doing that.”
Brian trails a hand up the inside of one thigh, bites Justin’s neck just above his collarbone, and Justin arches toward the touch, lets out a tiny mewl. He’ll be begging in under a minute, he knows, so he wriggles against Brian, finds a nipple with his right hand and twists.
“Little fucker,” Brian grunts, slapping his hand away and sliding along his body before pausing to snag a condom and lube from the drawer in Justin’s scrounged nightstand. Justin barely has time to inhale before Brian’s sheathed cock is pressing against him, demanding entrance.
It’s been a while, and the burn as Brian enters him makes Justin writhe until Brian forces himself the rest of the way in and claims Justin’s lips in a hard kiss. Justin feels himself melt against the mattress, his senses heightened until he can distinguish each separate place his body touches Brian’s, can feel each muscle as it shifts, can feel the friction as their sweat-slicked skin touches and burns. There was a fight at one point, Justin thinks, aren’t we fighting about something? Wasn’t there a, oh fuck, yes, there. He gives up, because being angry at Brian is generally impossible when Brian is also making him squirm with pleasure and anyway, he can’t remember what the fuck was important about their earlier discussion.
“Love you,” he whispers. Brian rocks harder against him, brings a hand up to tangle in his hair, choking out something that may be a reciprocal declaration but mostly just sounds like a groan.
And then he’s shaking and coming and wrapping his legs around Brian, who thrusts twice more before reaching his own climax. They collapse together, tangled into a musky knot of arms and legs and cocks and mouths, catching their breath in the abrupt quiet.
“You know,” Brian says after he pulls out, rolls onto his back, lights a cigarette “love is a lot about sacrifice.”
Justin figured this out about seven months ago, and again while he slept last night, but he remains silent. Brian is thinking out loud, and if Justin has learned anything, it is that calculated silence can lead to an amazing payoff. “Kinnetik’s doing well in Pittsburgh,” Brian continues. “No reason we can’t open a small satellite office in New York.”
Too afraid to speak, Justin holds his breath. “I want to know you,” Brian says. He takes a deep drag, holds it in his lungs, blows it back out in a curling cloud of grey smoke.
“You do,” says Justin. “You know me as well as anyone.”
“No,” says Brian, “I don’t. I don’t know your friends, or where you go out, or your favorite place to grab coffee in the morning.” His entire body tenses, a reaction he covers well by shifting away from Justin, but despite the time since their last encounter, Justin can still read him.
“You know me,” Justin insists. “You’ve always known me.”
Brian laughs at that, sucks in a breath of smoke, exhales. “Well, I was the first.”
Justin chuckles as well and curls into Brian’s side. “You were,” he says.
VI. The Village in the Morning
Two days later, Brian calls Cynthia at six o’clock in the morning to inform her that he’ll be taking a few weeks and to call him only in case of emergency. Like the extraordinary assistant she is, she neither asks him about his motives nor points out the hour, simply tells him she’ll be in touch and not to worry, that she and Ted can handle anything the clients throw at them.
In the bed across the room, Justin groans, turns over, and yawns, which Brian knows means he’s about to wake up. He’s never seen anyone else in the morning consistently enough to recognize how he starts his mornings, so he’s never going to tell Justin that he likes the way he yawns and then blinks a few times and then stretches his whole body, bit by bit, until he’s spread the full length of the bed, sleek and beautiful. Justin would piece that together and figure that Brian was getting soft in his old age, and he wouldn’t let Brian forget it for years, if ever, and Brian would probably have to kill his smug little ass with a machete, and it would all be bloody and messy and not fun enough to warrant the effort.
Smiling, Brian takes a running start, launches himself in perfect form, and lands across the bed next to Justin, who yelps in surprise as he bounces into the air and comes back down in an awkward sprawl, glaring at Brian, mussed and annoyed, with bloodshot eyes and a scowl that would send a lesser man fleeing back out of the tangle of sheets.
Brian’s not a lesser man, though, so he grins in a way that he knows will make Justin seethe and melt, props himself up on his elbows, and plants a wet, open-mouthed kiss on Justin’s lips before sliding across his cheek to bite his earlobe and nose down his neck.
“Fuck, Brian,” Justin says, and turns into the kiss, capturing Brian’s lips again, smiling into the contact.
“You’re awake,” Brian points out helpfully, clarifying his meaning by sliding a hand underneath the covers, down over Justin’s stomach, between his legs.
“You’re quick to catch on,” Justin says, his eyes defying Brian to make him react to the touch, make him squirm. Or at least, that’s how Brian interprets it, because he spreads his fingers, drags one up the inside of Justin’s thigh, edging closer and closer to his cock but never quite reaching it, circling down from the middle of Justin’s chest, tickling lightly, leaving Justin shuddering and gasping out something that sounds too painful to be laughter.
And then Brian rises from the bed, saunters away, and starts making a pot of coffee to go with the toast he pops into the toaster. There is silence from the bedroom for a moment. Then, “You asshole,” Justin calls. “You’d better not fucking leave me here like this.”
“Does the baby have a problem?” Brian mocks from the kitchen. “Because if he does, he can fucking deal with it himself, and if you come on your single set of sheets again, your ass is mine.”
“My ass is already yours,” Justin says. “You’re going to have to start branching out with your threats. Most of them sound kind of fun.”
“I’ll never fuck you again.”
Silence.
“Fine. Fuckwit.” There are sounds from the bed, sounds of sheets being rearranged, and then waddling footsteps as Justin exits the room and makes his way to the shower down the hall. Brian smiles and pulls a mug out of the train wreck cupboard, sits in one of Justin’s rickety chairs, and opens the morning paper to residential real estate ads. Love might involve sacrifice, but it sure as hell deserves a private bathroom
VII. After All
Brian returns to Pittsburgh to work out the business end of things three weeks later, shows up in the dinner to confront the assault he knows awaits from Debbie’s corner. She’s oddly sedate, however, and only hits him once before bringing him his coffee and french fries. He sits for ten minutes trying to decide why he persists in ordering the fucking terrible food at the diner before Hunter enters and slides into the booth across from him.
“Yo,” he says. “You lost me twenty bucks.”
“How the fuck did I lose you money?” Brian asks, looking up.
“I figured you’d only be able to stand it for five days before you got the hell out of Pittsburgh and hit New York after that ugly blonde guy you follow around like a puppy.”
Brian’s not sure whether to be more offended by Hunter the Hustler’s criticism of his taste or implication that he is in some way incapable of acting of his own accord. He decides, in the end, to ignore both in favor of slathering his french fries with ketchup and washing the salt and grease away with a mouthful of coffee.
“You can make it up to me, though,” Hunter says, and Christ, the kid is still talking.
“I’m not going to fuck you,” Brian says. “I have standards.”
“Don’t want your cock,” says Hunter. “Actually, I want your apartment. At least, I want to be able to escape there every once in a while, because seriously, there’s only so long I can listen to Ben and Michael fucking before I get a little queasy.”
Against his better, judgment, Brian smiles.
“Besides,” Hunter continues, “I fucked that murderer cop dude for DNA. I figure you still owe me like my entire college tuition.”
“Anything else?” Brian asks.
“Yeah,” says Hunter, and Brian doesn’t know why he expected anything else. “A large chocolate shake.”
*****
The End
Written By: a_short_detour
Timeline: Post Season 5
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: None
Genre A little Angst, a little Romance, a little tying up of loose ends
Coda
IV. What New York Couples Fight About
Justin sleeps, and dreams in shades of blue. Shadows dance at the edges of his spotlight, but they’re shuffled out of sight as soon as they appear by the hand of the puppeteer above him, the one directing the shots.
He’s been here before.
He knows this.
Where? Where has he been?
Where is he going? Where is here?
Time shifts, the fabric of time folds around him, cool and silk-smooth, caressing his eyes, his forehead, slipping down over his arms before it falls to the floor and melts away. He’s there and not there, watching the scene, living it. He’s standing, smiling, his heart trapped under a bow tie.
Room full of eighteen-year-olds. Brian and a room full of eighteen-year-olds and an old song and a spotlight.
Spin. Step, step step, pull back, twirl, spot, return.
Dip back, low, grinning.
Look into a pair of dark green eyes and see things he will never say and know things he will never learn and feel twelve and giddy and ancient and wise.
Squeal just slightly and feel lifted, fluid, meet his lips as he returns to Earth.
Dance through a parking lot, catch his hand. Know he will never let go, not really, leave him leaning against his Jeep and walk away humming, white silk scarf cool around careless hands.
Justin. Turn, send a smile back to him, something displaces air and peripheral vision and game over.
He snaps awake, struggling to breathe, and imagines Brian touching his shoulder, gently, telling him to inhale, then exhale, there’s a good boy, keep doing that. The calm comes slowly, overtakes him piece by piece until his heart slows and he stops shaking long enough to pull his covers back over himself and curl up in bed. What was that? he thinks, though he knows what it was. Even as his brain struggles to process it, process a vague spot of not there that is now very much there, he’s reaching for his phone, flipping it open, dialing Brian.
Brian answers after two heart-stopping rings. “Hey,” he says when he picks up.
“Hey,” says Justin. He’s not sure how to continue the conversation. He and Brian have never been good at talking over the phone, have always been far too tactile to communicate well with a disembodied voice miles away. “I was just calling to check in.”
Brian doesn’t respond for a second. “Everything all right?” he asks.
No, Justin wants to say. No, everything is not all right. You told me it didn’t matter how long we were apart, that it was only time, but it fucking matters. You come up here for the stupid shit, for gallery openings and to fuck me when you can’t get enough in Pittsburgh, but you never stay. Daylight comes and you’re gone.
“When are you coming up again?” he asks instead.
“Don’t know yet,” says Brian. “I have a lot to get done here, business.”
He’s hedging, which would piss Justin off except he can’t muster the energy for anger right now. “Just make it soon,” he says. Soon, he thinks, or not at all. I can’t keep doing this, this thing where we don’t talk until you sneak up here for a weekend and we fuck and it’s like normal and then you go back and we don’t speak for another month. He quashes the line of thought. “I sold a painting last week.”
“Always told you they’d be clamoring for your work.”
“Clamoring might be a little strong. It’s New York. Everyone’s showing stuff to the same market, and we’re all a lot of really small fish in a fucking huge pond.”
“Tell me that in ten years when Taylor originals go for thousands.”
Justin smiles despite himself, feels his chest begin to unclench. “It’s afternoon,” he says. “I should’ve been up hours ago.”
“As I recall,” Brian says, “you’re always up in the mornings.”
“It’s been a long time,” Justin says in response. He can’t remember the last time he fucked someone other than Brian, though he must have picked up at least a few tricks in his visits to the clubs. But they’re shadows in comparison, faceless bodies that begin to fade even before he comes, distil into nebulous ideas of shoulders and hips and thighs and cocks. He could pass them on the street, have conversations with them, work with them, and never recognize them.
“You never know when I might drop in,” Brian says. Justin can see himself as a twenty-year-old to whom those words would have meant the world, to whom they would have meant love and commitment and joy. Now, they mean nothing, mean a shrivelled half-promise that Brian will never acknowledge.
That Brian acknowledged once, five years and a lifetime ago, at a stupid fucking teenaged rite of passage, before a dancefloor covered with Justin’s classmates and best friend and worst enemy.
“I don’t know how much longer I can do this,” Justin hears himself say. “I don’t know whether I can keep pretending not seeing you doesn’t matter.” Because once, remembering what had happened at his prom would have made all the difference, but now he’s an adult and he needs more than an eighteen-year-old with a crush.
And then he thinks, fuck it, and says, “I dreamed about the prom. I remember it.”
“Fuck,” says Brian. Then, “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine. I just thought I should tell you.” Justin knows something that Brian has never told him about that night, and it’s that Brian died. Not that he almost strangled himself playing with scarfing (dumbass that he is, it had probably never occurred to him to think about the people he’d have left behind), but that he had laid it all on the line, smiled at Justin with open eyes, and ten minutes later knelt on the oily floor of the parking lot dialing and ambulance with trembling, blood-slicked fingers.
Daphne described Brian’s reaction in detail once Justin woke from his coma. The paramedics had almost had to sedate him, she said, because he was so convinced Justin was dead and refused to let go. She had taken Brian’s cell phone from unresisting fingers and dialed Michael, told him to meet them at the hospital. At the scene, as they watched from the sidelines, Brian kept telling her that it was his fault, his own fucking fault for showing up and giving Chris fucking Hobbs reason to use that baseball bat. That he had given something, released something to Justin for safekeeping, and watched as one swing obliterated it.
Suddenly, Justin is furious. “Why the fuck didn’t you tell me?” he demands. “You didn’t tell me shit about that night, just that we danced, and that you knew why Debbie calls me Sunshine. Bullshit. You told me nothing important, nothing that might actually mean you’d have to open up to me for another thirty seconds. Everyone,” his voice cracks, but he presses on, resolute, “everyone knew, except for me. Everyone knew what we said, and how we looked at each other, and which song was playing, except me. And you never told me.”
“I--”
“Don’t start,” Justin says. “Just...don’t even. Don’t start. I could have died in Babylon that night with the bomb, and I never would have known. Because you didn’t tell me.”
“And what? You think I don’t fucking know that? You think I asked you to marry me for the hell of it, because I wanted to settle down with a nice girl and carry on the Kinney line?”
“No,” says Justin. “I think you asked me to marry you because you thought it was the only way you could own me enough.”
“The fuck is that supposed to mean?” Brain growls.
“That you can’t let go. That the reason we stay together is because you can’t let me go, and the reason you’re not here is that you can’t fucking let go of Pittsburgh and your worshipful court. I have friends here, you know, friends that are mine and didn’t come packaged with the guy I was fucking, and I’m selling my art and paying for my own apartment and it’s working out. And if you wanted me, you’d be here by now.”
Justin sucks in a deep breath, poised to continue, but Brian interrupts, almost inaudibly, “Maybe you’re right.”
There’s no real response to that. Justin is prepared to try his hand at it anyway when he realizes that a dial tone is coming from the other end of the connection.
Fine, he thinks, and calls Aaron.
“Taylor, my man,” says Aaron when he answers. “I hear you’ve got some of this new invention called spending money. What say you we hit the bars tonight and I steal the peanuts while you distract the bartenders?”
Justin smiles, because he can’t help himself around Aaron, pretty much ever, and says, “I was thinking more about hitting the bars in twenty minutes.”
“Ouch,” says Aaron. “You realize it’s barely four and you were up until the wee hours of the morning last night? Ever think of letting your body get over the shit you put in it before you drag it out again?”
“Or,” says Justin, “I can do it myself.”
“Twenty minutes,” Aaron says.
--
Brian sets the phone down, takes deep breaths and carefully closes off his mind as he wanders the loft deciding what to take on his impromptu trip.
Once, he knows, the argument would have convinced him not to go. Now, it simply reinforces his conviction to leave.
He trails a finger over the ticket on the counter and then retreats to his bedroom to pack.
V. Paper Boats
Justin lost track of time three bars ago, and he tosses back another shot of something that’s maybe vodka but he doesn’t care because it burns in the good way that means it will make his head throb in the morning. He’s what they generally call shitfaced, and he doesn’t give a fuck.
Minutes or hours or days later, he finds himself staring at his reflection in the bar bathroom, examining the shifting shape of his face as it drifts in and out of focus. The world is spinning a little, and he’s not sure he likes the sensation because anyone knows the world works a lot better when it stays in one place.
“Taylor,” Aaron says. “Hey, Justin, let’s get you home.”
“Home?” Justin asks. “Home’s a fucking shoebox with a mattress.”
”Home is someplace where you can puke in relative quiet and not in this shithole basement bathroom.”
He’s steering Justin now, and Justin can feel it, and he doesn’t really care except before he knows it they’re at the stairs and he doesn’t know how the fuck he’s going to get to the top of the flight.
Aaron seems to sense his distress. “Just take it one step at a time,” he says, and if Justin were in full command of his faculties he’d make a mental note to thank whoever taught Aaron to deal with hopelessly wasted men. “One step at a time,” Aaron repeats. “One step at a time.”
“One step at a time,” Justin echoes, lifting his right foot, which is suddenly located eight or nine miles away from his body, and setting it down on the first stair. Or what he thinks is the first stair--his toe catches only the edge of the metal before it slips off again and he stumbles back against Aaron.
“Can’t do it,” he whimpers, burying his face in Aaron’s shirt. “Don’t wanna. Can’t.”
“Oh, for Christ’s sake, Justin. Pull yourself together and walk up the goddamn stairs.”
“I can’t, I’m not...I can’t. Can’t do shit, Aaron, can’t do fucking anything right, can’t walk up the--can’t.”
Aaron pushes him back but catches him before he can trip over his own feet. “Listen to me,” he says. “You don’t get to talk like that. For a lot of reasons. First, because you’re drunk off your ass and that never leads to anything good except sometimes getting laid; second, because you can do stuff--you’re an artist, remember? And the only reason you’re this wasted right now is that someone bought your paintings, meaning you had money to waste on drinks. So don’t give me that shit--just walk up the stairs.”
“But I can’t do this,” Justin says, getting into it, deciding he might cry in a few minutes just for the hell of making someone care, making Aaron care enough to hug him or tell him he’ll be all right.
Maybe Aaron senses the need, because he stops talking, steps forward, and catches Justin in a warm embrace that forces him out of his self-pity and back into the real world, where he has a bitch of a headache, no good recollection of how he came to be in the basement of a nameless bar, and a strong urge to vomit.
“I’mma throw up,” he mumbles, and staggers back into the bathroom, where he empties his stomach while Aaron makes exasperated sounds and tells him how much of a dumbass he is and runs gentle, cool fingers through the hair at the back of his neck.
--
A greasy drizzle coats New York by the time Brian catches a cab at the airport and gives the driver Justin’s address. The cabbie eyes him with a quick questioning glance, as if wondering what a man with expensive luggage and a nice suit is doing traveling anywhere but the upper half of the island, but thankfully he says nothing. Without comment, he navigates to the apartment building, takes Brian’s money, and wishes him a good evening before driving away.
This sucks ass, Brian thinks two hours later, when he’s still huddled in the front doorway of Justin’s building, shivering, careful not to allow the filthy rain that has slid down the brick façade drip on his jacket. It’s only nine o’clock and Justin isn’t picking up his cell phone.
He doesn’t know where Justin is. It sort of scares the shit out of him.
Justin has a life here, he has bars and clubs and friends and Brian knows almost nothing of it. Doesn’t know where to start looking, even, has no idea where Justin could be at this hour.
He pulls his cell phone out again, dials Justin’s number.
“Hey, you’ve reached Justin’s cell, please leave a message.” Beep.
“Justin,” Brian says. “Would you, I’m out here. I’m in town. Stuck outside your apartment--how about letting me in?”
Hanging up, he huffs out a sigh of frustration and sits on his luggage, keeping a casual eye on the suspicious group of young men down the street and scanning for Justin.
Three girls step down the sidewalk together, their heels clicking in a quick staccato as they hurry, eyes downcast, toward their destination. An old man sits on a stoop across the way, his tattered jacket wrapped tightly around his shoulders. And around the corner stagger two young men, the taller, dark-haired one supporting someone who looks remarkably like--
“Justin,” Brian says, fighting off an initial bout of panic. He’s probably just drunk, not mugged or hurt or sick, but Brian’s moving faster than necessary, leaving his suitcase and not bothering with his umbrella.
“Justin,” he says again, once he’s within range. “Justin, what the fuck?”
“’m just a little wasted,” Justin says, illustrating his idea of little by holding up one hand, thumb and forefinger slightly separated.
“I’m Aaron,” says the boy bent under Justin’s body weight. “I’m guessing you’re Brian.”
Brian spares him a two-second glance, nods, and returns his attention to Justin, who is now attempting to slide quietly to the pavement.
“Give me your keys,” Brian says. “Let’s get him in.”
It’s a challenge, but they make it, somehow stuff Justin and Aaron and Brian and Brian’s belongings into an elevator the size of a small armoire. Somehow dig Justin’s keys out of his pocket, open his door, and maneuver him into bed.
“I think he’s done puking for the night,” Aaron says, “but I’d keep an eye on him. You know, in case something happens.”
Brian nods wordlessly and shows Aaron out before turning to remove Justin’s clothing as well as his own and sliding into bed, wrapping an arm around Justin’s waist. “You idiot,” he says. “What the fuck are you trying to prove?”
“You knew,” Justin mumbles. “You knew you were coming and you didn’t tell me. Asshole.”
“Yell at me tomorrow,” Brian says. “Go to sleep. You’re fucking drunk and it’s not even late. Knew you needed me up here to keep you out of trouble.”
“Keep me out of trouble,” Justin says into his pillow. “You need me to keep you out of trouble.”
“I think in this case the facts clearly demonstrate--”
Justin’s snore cuts off the rest of what Brian had intended to say.
--
Justin nearly screams the next morning when his alarm wakes him by stabbing a fucking switchblade through one of his eye sockets and, for good measure, twisting a little. “Fuck,” he mutters, and sends a groping hand out in pursuit of the little shit, knocking it off the bedside table and knocking it, still tweeting, to the floor. He seriously contemplates leaving it there to rot in peace, better for the world that way, when a herd of elephants approaches, stops, and screams at him. Groaning, he covers his ears, rolls into a tight ball, and mutters something like, “Fuck off, Brian.”
Brian unfolds him by poking him not too gently in the ribs, screaming something else, and then stampeding to what serves as the kitchen, where he creates a hurricane of coffee- and toast-making sounds. The noise becomes tolerable after a few minutes, so Justin opens his eyes, carefully, stands up just as carefully, steps into a pair of sweatpants, and shuffles his way towards the noise. “What happened?” he mumbles.
It’s unfair how Brian can look like a fucking underwear model even when he’s just gotten out of bed, and when he grins Justin feels a strong urge to smack him. Or kiss him. Or, you know, both. “Do you remember anything of last night?” Brian asks, that fucking smirk still on his face.
“If I remembered, would I ask you?” He’s not in the mood for Brian’s fucking I-know-something-you-don’t games, and he wants to know whether he should keep his standing appointment at the clinic or go in for an extra test like, this afternoon.
Speaking of which, in a roundabout way, why is Brian here at all? The last clear memory he has is of arguing, then of calling Aaron to go bar-hopping. Which clearly worked out, because the ache that suffuses his body can only be attributed to a night of overenthusiastic indulgence. “When did you get here?” he asks around the swollen cotton ball that is his tongue.
“Last night, around nine,” Brian says. The toaster pops, for once without also tripping the circuit, and he drops it onto a plate, pours Justin a mug of coffee, and hands them over.
Justin sets the food on the card table beside his sink and settles onto a chair. Taking a sip of coffee, he winces at the sting of the bitter hot liquid. He picks at the crust of the toast, and tries again. “Why are you here?”
“Decided there wasn’t anything left for me in the Pitts.”
There’s nothing to hold onto in that statement, nowhere to begin with it. It explains everything and nothing, creates as many questions as it supplies answers, and Justin simply doesn’t have the energy to argue. So he shrugs and says, “Fuck me.”
Clearly, this is a request that Brian can both interpret and respond to correctly, because before Justin is quite aware what’s happened, he’s on his back in his bed, gasping for breath between kisses, Brian’s body stretched taut above him, between his splayed legs. “Fuck,” Justin says, his voice rasping. “Fuck, keep doing that.”
Brian trails a hand up the inside of one thigh, bites Justin’s neck just above his collarbone, and Justin arches toward the touch, lets out a tiny mewl. He’ll be begging in under a minute, he knows, so he wriggles against Brian, finds a nipple with his right hand and twists.
“Little fucker,” Brian grunts, slapping his hand away and sliding along his body before pausing to snag a condom and lube from the drawer in Justin’s scrounged nightstand. Justin barely has time to inhale before Brian’s sheathed cock is pressing against him, demanding entrance.
It’s been a while, and the burn as Brian enters him makes Justin writhe until Brian forces himself the rest of the way in and claims Justin’s lips in a hard kiss. Justin feels himself melt against the mattress, his senses heightened until he can distinguish each separate place his body touches Brian’s, can feel each muscle as it shifts, can feel the friction as their sweat-slicked skin touches and burns. There was a fight at one point, Justin thinks, aren’t we fighting about something? Wasn’t there a, oh fuck, yes, there. He gives up, because being angry at Brian is generally impossible when Brian is also making him squirm with pleasure and anyway, he can’t remember what the fuck was important about their earlier discussion.
“Love you,” he whispers. Brian rocks harder against him, brings a hand up to tangle in his hair, choking out something that may be a reciprocal declaration but mostly just sounds like a groan.
And then he’s shaking and coming and wrapping his legs around Brian, who thrusts twice more before reaching his own climax. They collapse together, tangled into a musky knot of arms and legs and cocks and mouths, catching their breath in the abrupt quiet.
“You know,” Brian says after he pulls out, rolls onto his back, lights a cigarette “love is a lot about sacrifice.”
Justin figured this out about seven months ago, and again while he slept last night, but he remains silent. Brian is thinking out loud, and if Justin has learned anything, it is that calculated silence can lead to an amazing payoff. “Kinnetik’s doing well in Pittsburgh,” Brian continues. “No reason we can’t open a small satellite office in New York.”
Too afraid to speak, Justin holds his breath. “I want to know you,” Brian says. He takes a deep drag, holds it in his lungs, blows it back out in a curling cloud of grey smoke.
“You do,” says Justin. “You know me as well as anyone.”
“No,” says Brian, “I don’t. I don’t know your friends, or where you go out, or your favorite place to grab coffee in the morning.” His entire body tenses, a reaction he covers well by shifting away from Justin, but despite the time since their last encounter, Justin can still read him.
“You know me,” Justin insists. “You’ve always known me.”
Brian laughs at that, sucks in a breath of smoke, exhales. “Well, I was the first.”
Justin chuckles as well and curls into Brian’s side. “You were,” he says.
VI. The Village in the Morning
Two days later, Brian calls Cynthia at six o’clock in the morning to inform her that he’ll be taking a few weeks and to call him only in case of emergency. Like the extraordinary assistant she is, she neither asks him about his motives nor points out the hour, simply tells him she’ll be in touch and not to worry, that she and Ted can handle anything the clients throw at them.
In the bed across the room, Justin groans, turns over, and yawns, which Brian knows means he’s about to wake up. He’s never seen anyone else in the morning consistently enough to recognize how he starts his mornings, so he’s never going to tell Justin that he likes the way he yawns and then blinks a few times and then stretches his whole body, bit by bit, until he’s spread the full length of the bed, sleek and beautiful. Justin would piece that together and figure that Brian was getting soft in his old age, and he wouldn’t let Brian forget it for years, if ever, and Brian would probably have to kill his smug little ass with a machete, and it would all be bloody and messy and not fun enough to warrant the effort.
Smiling, Brian takes a running start, launches himself in perfect form, and lands across the bed next to Justin, who yelps in surprise as he bounces into the air and comes back down in an awkward sprawl, glaring at Brian, mussed and annoyed, with bloodshot eyes and a scowl that would send a lesser man fleeing back out of the tangle of sheets.
Brian’s not a lesser man, though, so he grins in a way that he knows will make Justin seethe and melt, props himself up on his elbows, and plants a wet, open-mouthed kiss on Justin’s lips before sliding across his cheek to bite his earlobe and nose down his neck.
“Fuck, Brian,” Justin says, and turns into the kiss, capturing Brian’s lips again, smiling into the contact.
“You’re awake,” Brian points out helpfully, clarifying his meaning by sliding a hand underneath the covers, down over Justin’s stomach, between his legs.
“You’re quick to catch on,” Justin says, his eyes defying Brian to make him react to the touch, make him squirm. Or at least, that’s how Brian interprets it, because he spreads his fingers, drags one up the inside of Justin’s thigh, edging closer and closer to his cock but never quite reaching it, circling down from the middle of Justin’s chest, tickling lightly, leaving Justin shuddering and gasping out something that sounds too painful to be laughter.
And then Brian rises from the bed, saunters away, and starts making a pot of coffee to go with the toast he pops into the toaster. There is silence from the bedroom for a moment. Then, “You asshole,” Justin calls. “You’d better not fucking leave me here like this.”
“Does the baby have a problem?” Brian mocks from the kitchen. “Because if he does, he can fucking deal with it himself, and if you come on your single set of sheets again, your ass is mine.”
“My ass is already yours,” Justin says. “You’re going to have to start branching out with your threats. Most of them sound kind of fun.”
“I’ll never fuck you again.”
Silence.
“Fine. Fuckwit.” There are sounds from the bed, sounds of sheets being rearranged, and then waddling footsteps as Justin exits the room and makes his way to the shower down the hall. Brian smiles and pulls a mug out of the train wreck cupboard, sits in one of Justin’s rickety chairs, and opens the morning paper to residential real estate ads. Love might involve sacrifice, but it sure as hell deserves a private bathroom
VII. After All
Brian returns to Pittsburgh to work out the business end of things three weeks later, shows up in the dinner to confront the assault he knows awaits from Debbie’s corner. She’s oddly sedate, however, and only hits him once before bringing him his coffee and french fries. He sits for ten minutes trying to decide why he persists in ordering the fucking terrible food at the diner before Hunter enters and slides into the booth across from him.
“Yo,” he says. “You lost me twenty bucks.”
“How the fuck did I lose you money?” Brian asks, looking up.
“I figured you’d only be able to stand it for five days before you got the hell out of Pittsburgh and hit New York after that ugly blonde guy you follow around like a puppy.”
Brian’s not sure whether to be more offended by Hunter the Hustler’s criticism of his taste or implication that he is in some way incapable of acting of his own accord. He decides, in the end, to ignore both in favor of slathering his french fries with ketchup and washing the salt and grease away with a mouthful of coffee.
“You can make it up to me, though,” Hunter says, and Christ, the kid is still talking.
“I’m not going to fuck you,” Brian says. “I have standards.”
“Don’t want your cock,” says Hunter. “Actually, I want your apartment. At least, I want to be able to escape there every once in a while, because seriously, there’s only so long I can listen to Ben and Michael fucking before I get a little queasy.”
Against his better, judgment, Brian smiles.
“Besides,” Hunter continues, “I fucked that murderer cop dude for DNA. I figure you still owe me like my entire college tuition.”
“Anything else?” Brian asks.
“Yeah,” says Hunter, and Brian doesn’t know why he expected anything else. “A large chocolate shake.”
*****
The End