Entry #25 - "Seventeen" (3 of 3)
Title: Seventeen, part 3
Written By: yoursweater
Timeline: Post Ep-513
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: None
Genre Angst, romance
Seventeen, part 3
Part III.
Pittsburgh isn’t as shiny as it used to be. Hasn’t been in a while.
Brian throws his suit jacket over the back of a kitchen stool and unbuttons his shirt, the loft smelling stale from being left alone for two days. Justin is still on his clothes, and he pretends that he doesn’t breathe in the smell of his suit shirt before letting it drop to the floor.
The cleaner’s can wait until tomorrow, because all that Brian wants right now is a shower.
(The shower is the only thing Brian wants in Pittsburgh.)
...
In New York City everything moves fast: the people, the transportation, the trends.
“I’m thinking of going back to Pittsburgh for my mom’s birthday next week,” Justin says, talking over Will’s newspaper, opened to the stock market. Justin doesn’t understand the fucking stock market, but that’s okay because in all honesty he doesn’t really care, either.
He wipes the paint from his hands with a spare cloth, and waits for Will to say something.
Just say something.
“Yeah,” He shrugs, not bothering to look up from his paper.
Later that night Justin accidentally spills a can of red paint over Will’s new European plush sofa. Justin didn’t see it there, Will. He swears.
With his fingers crossed behind his back.
...
When Justin left Brian the second to last time, it was the hardest. Because there was no baseball bat pushing Brian to the side, and there was no fiddler to cart Justin off into the sunset. There wasn’t even a campaign designed to tear them apart, or a nameless fuck in the third aisle of Liberty Grocery.
There was just Justin. And that was what hurt the most. There was no dramatic reason for them to end it, that time: because the fact was, Justin wasn’t happy.
Brian would have gladly dealt with another musician type over that.
And as Rage stands at the precipice - -
He had decided to blame that one on Michael, because it was the easiest way to deal. That was the last of Mikey as he knew it, though. He remembers that’s when the feelings changed, and nothing was really, truly the same way again.
...
With the exception of Ted, nobody catches on to what happened in New York. Not like there are a lot of people left to do so, but Brian wouldn’t have put it past Emmett to at least squeal a little. Actually, all in all he’s generally surprised that Theodore hasn’t let that one slip, to Blake at least.
Had it happened six years ago:
“You little fuckin’ shit!” Debbie would’ve squawked, but Brian would be able to see that smile underneath her scowl, because he figured she’d think it was the beginning of something new. That was the only way Debbie worked, the only way Brian knew her. “Well is he coming back, then?”
And Brian would have avoided the subject at all costs, instead opting to grab his black coffee and run.
Sometimes he wishes he hadn’t run away from Debbie so often, because he misses her now. And yeah, fuck you, maybe he does want to hear that sharp voice again, or at least see her slap Michael. That’s all he really wants lately, anyways.
But it doesn’t happen six years ago. It happens now. So this is how it goes instead:
“Brian, you’ve got a meeting in conference room one,” Cynthia says, poking her head through the door of Brian’s office. He looks up from the screen of his computer. He hasn’t been sleeping that well since he got back from New York, and hasn’t had the energy to track down enough weed to put him into a kind of mind frame that makes him feel normal.
Nodding and half waving his hand, he goes back to signing the papers before she has a chance to close the door.
Conference room one can wait for him, goddamnit. It’s the one thing he knows will.
...
The day Brian found out he wasn’t going to die from Cancer was the day Justin punched him in the side and gave him a bruise for a week.
“What the fuck was that for, you little shit?” Brian had shouted, half bent over and clutching at his side. The meds made him puke a whole fucking lot, and he wanted to throw a returning punch but figured he’d rather keep his insides inside. At least until there was no other choice, and he was bent over the toilet against his will.
Justin stuck a finger in his face, and that was when Brian knew the kid had been hanging around Debbie too much.
“I would’ve killed you if it was terminal, you know,” He’d managed, and then Brian couldn’t breathe because his mouth was pressed into Justin, and Justin was squeezing so fucking hard it made Brian’s sides hurt. He pulled back because it was reflex, but then Justin was tugging harder, and Brian let him because of the meds made him weak... and the. The everything.
Slowly Brian began to hug back. He closed his eyes and breathed through his nose, and the only reason he did it was because he could.
He wasn’t dead yet.
...
The day Justin arrived in New York, he did so with an ache in his stomach.
As soon as he’d stepped off the plane he could feel that the air was different, the way it touched his skin and how it moved down his throat and through his lungs -- it was all different. The air in New York made everything louder somehow, made every little sound pinch his ears painfully. The air made everything just a little harder to swallow.
He found a taxi, pulled the piece of wrinkled paper from his pocket. The name, an address and a phone number, but that’s all it was. Nothing else but everything that he knew he should want.
The driver knew where it was, so two twenty dollar bills later Justin found himself standing on a wet sidewalk, wide-eyed and back on Liberty Avenue for the first time. He’d swallowed the lump in his throat and remembered how Debbie had assured him that Pittsburgh was only forty minutes away. And then he pushed his finger against the doorbell. Inside, he heard the ring echo down the front hall.
He stood there for fifteen minutes, but nobody answered.
(Everything worked out, eventually. He just sat and waited for someone to come by, and it turned out to be Daphne’s friend [I’m Jack] on the first try of, “Hey, can you help me?...”
So later that night Justin scratched the back of his neck and curled up on the side of the thin mattress, smelling of mildew of mould, and he watched the display screen light up on his cell phone. Jumped only a little bit when it began to ring.
When he had kissed his mother’s cheek and said goodbye earlier that day, he was still feeling okay. Debbie had threatened him, lightly slapping his cheek, and even then all that he felt was a little pang of something beginning to grow in his stomach. When he said goodbye to everyone at the airport there were no tears in his eyes, even though Emmett had been bawling. And when he left Pittsburgh, he didn’t cry. He only felt the slightest bit homesick when his plane landed, and the flight assistant welcomed him to New York.
But then he was laying on the mildewed mattress, and the cheesy two-tone rendition of 2001: A Space Odyssey was vibrating his cell right across the table beside his bed, and that’s the moment when the lump in his throat exploded. He had started to ache so deep that he couldn’t even be pissed off that Brian had changed the tone a-fucking-gain. But he couldn’t laugh, either.
The last thing he ever considered was actually answering it.
Brian phoned a week later, as well, and Justin remembers their conversation still:
“Hi,” Justin had said, hearing Brian exhale slowly, say hi back. “You alright?”
“Never been better,” Brian lied, saying it through clenched teeth. “So how’s New York fit?”
An awkward laugh as Justin whispered, “Kind of loose,” and heard Ted bumbling around in the background of Brian’s office. He felt Brian’s breath on his neck as he heard the loud exhale through the phone. “Or maybe it’s too tight, depending on how you look at it.”
Brian’s laughter was tense and Justin heard Cynthia tell him about the meeting with Cool Optics in ten minutes.
And after a quiet later, that was the end of that.)
But now he’s in Pittsburgh again, not-so-glittery-Pittsburgh, and somehow the air is cleaner than it is in New York, and there are actually trees that have been alive for more than forty years. It doesn’t feel like home yet, but it feels better.
On the plane he had been nervous, twisting the ticket envelope in his fingers, blinking too much as he watched the ground from the sky, thought that it seemed as though it was an entire universe beneath them, and not just the world. He had wondered what time had done to everyone so far, Ted and Brian excluded, and tried to make an excuse as to why he hadn’t been back yet. He knew that they would all fall short.
For a second he wondered what Debbie will say to him, but then he remembered what his mother had told him just days previous over the phone, teary voice and all.
He misses Debbie a lot, sometimes.
...
Sometimes he would miss Brian. Not that he would ever admit it, because he’d had what he wanted as far as anyone else was concerned. But he’d be lying in that mattress on the floor, and he would offhandedly think Brian in the most defenseless of ways. It left him breathless sometimes. But that was as it always had been, Brian had always found the perfect way to get the perfect reaction.
“Do you think about him anymore?” Ethan would ask in his own moments of weakness, because even though he would pretend like they were had the perfect homo relationship, Justin knew that he was still scared. Scared Justin would change his mind at a hair’s notice and go back to the huge loft, the huge banking account.
But he never would. He would never go back to the loft. Or the banking account. Or the anything. The only thing he ever thought about was going back to Brian.
And it wasn’t like he meant to. He never meant to hurt Ethan: all he had wanted to do was move on, get over the one hopeless high school crush that had dictated the remainder of his life. Then again he had also always wanted to learn a second language, but he never really found himself getting very far in that. One day, way back before Ethan, Justin had almost thought that he was fluent in Kinney Speak. And he had been. Sometimes he just forgot how to work the manual.
Funny how sometimes it only takes a second to remember.
But the fact still remained that sometimes Ethan would ask that question -- do you think about him anymore -- and Justin would falter and find himself squirming, because one thing that he never wanted to do was lie to Ethan. Nobody deserved that. Justin had been lied to, and he knew how it felt. Maybe it was never Brian who lied, but regardless. He knew how it felt.
So he’d whisper “sometimes” and shrug, pressing his mouth to the place where Ethan’s chest met his neck.
...
The moment Justin realizes it’s all changed is when he goes to the Liberty Diner. Truthfully he had been expecting Emmett and Ted in one booth, with Brian and Michael in the next. Hunter clearing the dishes from the counters, Justin Taylor: Version Two, while Debbie took orders. Like always.
But this is what Justin does see: the booths are filled with faces that he doesn’t know. And nobody knows him either, which throws him for a moment. I was Brian fucking Kinney’s boyfriend, I’m the one who saved you from Stockwell so you could wave your fucking flags, he wants to snap, and he almost does before he realizes that maybe they don’t know The Great Legends either, maybe the time has already passed. And it has. Because Debbie isn’t there, Hunter sure as hell isn’t either, and Justin doesn’t even know the waitress who’s working the busiest table, some petite thing that looks mildly frightened.
Nobody used to be scared in Liberty Diner. It was home.
“Can I help you?” The waitress asks, raising her eyebrows and her order pad in Justin’s direction.
He feels his throat tightening as he looks around: the Kickapoo Joy Juice sign is still the same, still hanging over the booth that the so-called ‘regulars’ used to sit in. The framed advertisement that has always been Justin’s favorite: huge and bright, everything he used to think Liberty Avenue was.
“No... no,” He forces a smile and shakes his head. “I’m just looking for someone.”
She smiles back and nods, moving to the next table to scribble down the elaborate order of four leather queens. Justin watches her with a New York sized lump in his throat. And it isn’t even the worst part that everything has changed, everything but that fucking sign at least. The worst part is that he remembers everything.
He remembers everything.
...
He didn’t expect the relationship he had with Ethan to end like that. Not after the roses and the promises and the fucking ring on top of it all. And maybe Brian had never given him any of those things, never came close in doing so as a matter of fact, but at least Brian had never lied.
Justin met Ethan by accident, at the hand of the lesbians for fucks sake. If everything had been different in the world of Brian Kinney and Justin Taylor, it wouldn’t have happened at all: because Justin wouldn’t have been with the Munchers, wouldn’t have been with Lindsay and Mel. He would’ve been celebrating his fucking birthday with his fucking boyfriend, whether Brian wanted to admit to it or not that was what he was. And in Justin’s perfect world, he did.
But reality wasn’t Justin’s perfect world. It hadn’t been at that point, anyways. And so it happened. He met Ethan, and felt that pinch in his stomach of ‘maybe there is something better than Brian, maybe I have been kidding myself all this time.’ Because what had Brian given him, really? A clubbed head, and more heart ache than he cared to remember. And as soon as he thought of that, found himself thinking about it in the most desperate of ways, he felt sick to the stomach, fucking disgusted with himself for even imagining it.
So he fell in love with Ethan. Or, “love” as Brian had put it during those couple of months. Always with the sarcastic sneer, his own hurt hidden behind thinly veiled sarcasm. Justin knew exactly what was going on, but truth be told he had been too involved in the roses and the promises and the [fucking] ring to care. And yeah, he grew up a lot then, without Brian. He grew up and he figured some things out even though he was still clueless about others, and it was probably for the better but sometimes he couldn’t help but think you fucking idiot, Justin, to imagine that he could get by without those goddamned explosions.
And maybe sometimes he thinks about Will, and he remembers things about Brian, and he wonders how the fuck everything has happened. How New York happened, and why the wedding never did. He wonders what would have happened if they had gotten married. He doesn’t exactly want to be married anymore, refuses to be tied down for that long to someone who... well. He’s grown up and maybe he’s a little lonely sometimes, but he’d rather be alone sometimes with Will around, than to be alone all the time by himself.
That’s just how New York fit.
....
He walks past Debbie’s house because he isn’t sure of what else to do. The red door has been repainted chocolate brown, and all of the wooden trim is now cream. Justin stands behind the iron fence for a while and watches, just remembering, until the living room curtain shifts and he realizes that Debbie doesn’t live there anymore, that he isn’t welcome. As he tugs his jacket closer to his neck, he thinks that Pittsburgh isn’t as cold as New York, but it’s almost as bad. He watches the sidewalk moving beneath him as he thinks, and pushes off the feeling of a hand creeping around the side of his neck.
It’s then, in that very moment, that he realizes he should’ve come back. If not for Brian than for everybody else, himself included. He hasn’t seen Mel and Linds and the kids since they moved, and that was such bullshit of him to say that he’d go up for a visit. Even then he knew he wouldn’t. But it had seemed like the right thing to say at the time, so he said it, even though in the end he never even saw them off. He had seen Brian, though, Brian’s fucking face after saying goodbye to his only son: the same son that he never thought he’d fall in love with in the first place.
Justin takes another turn and ends up on Liberty Avenue again, always flashy and trashy and the best of only one world. But it feels so different, like everyone has moved on from this one moment in time. He watches a group of friends going into the Diner, and they’re laughing and talking, and it’s all so stereotypical: the flamed out Queen, the boring like tea businessman, the one everyone loves like a brother, the one everyone wants to be. Justin shakes his head and cuts between the bookstore and a little bakery, through to the little alley that ends at the top of Tremont Street.
When he gets to the loft he realizes that for the first time he can’t just barge his way in, and interrupt Brian in the middle of whatever it is that he might be doing. Justin doesn’t have a key, doesn’t have an in, doesn’t have anything. Chewing his bottom lip, he watches the intercom panel for a moment, and it doesn’t move or talk or do tricks, so he does it. He just bites the fucking bullet. They fucked two weeks ago, the least they can do is talk. He presses the button to Brian’s loft, and waits.
“Yeah,” Brian answers, cutting himself off by letting go of the button. Justin hears the static that separates them so clearly, right then.
He leans his shoulder against the wall, and realizes that he has no idea what he wants to say. Or how to even begin.
“Uh. Hi. It’s Justin.”
Silence. Brian’s waiting.
“I was just walking, and. Well. You know how things go.”
It’s Justin who waits now, Justin who needs a response before he can go any further. Once he’s counted to ten in his head, there’s a buzz before Brian asks, “You walked all the way from New York? I could’ve sent you a ticket if you were that desperate, Sunshine.”
And then the door is opening, and the intercom is clicking off.
...
The night Justin got Brian to fuck him for the second time was the night the universe as Michael Novotny knew it came crashing down. Because it just didn’t happen: it was so out of character, for Brian to be won over like that. With some stupid dance, and that was what pissed Michael off the most, the fact that Justin had come in, covered and glitter and without a shirt, and caught Brian’s interest. His desire. Michael had fucking been there for the last hundred and ten years, been there through the beatings and the puking and the crying.
And all that Justin needed was glitter and hips to start barging his way in?
“What’s that boy doing?” Emmett had asked him, way back when everything still made sense. His voice had been full of awe as he watched the kid slink across the floor, wrapping himself around anyone who would let happen. Michael leaned against the railing of the Babylon catwalk, and he fucking hated himself for it, but he couldn’t look away.
That was what he remembered as when everything began. Brian had a life before Justin, sure. Brian had been full of moments and things and memories that Justin would never know or touch or remember. But for Michael, that moment in Babylon, that single song, was the one that began to lay the cement for everything that they would eventually compromise themselves into being. That was the night Brian Kinney began to change, and if he were to look back now, Michael would know for sure that had been it.
He’s a selfish little shit,
Michael saw them standing outside the Diner once, when Justin was still a big headed teenager, jumping around Brian in circles like some careless puppy. Brian had been smoking, or trying to at least, and Michael saw the smirk on his face, but pretended that it wasn’t there. Justin was saying something, telling a story with his hands as he moved around, shifting from Brian’s left side to his right, playing the devil and the angel in a dual performance.
When Brian got fed up, he hadn’t snapped off some perfectly timed comment before making a quick exit. He’d bit the cigarette between his teeth and reached out, grabbing Justin around the shoulders and jerking him close. Brian had never been that gentle, especially before the bashing, but there was affection in his brashness, and it showed when Justin started to laugh, and reached up to pull the cigarette from between Brian’s lips.
Brian blew smoke in the kid’s face as a response, but hugged him regardless.
He used you,
The thing that really threw Michael off was that Brian would make excuses for Justin. Brian never made excuses for anyone, himself included. The only other time Michael had heard anything that sounded even remotely like, “Would you lay off him Mikey, he’s just a kid,” had been in ninth grade, when Brian told their then math teacher off, with, “It’s not Mikey’s fault you can’t teach worth a shit,” and was sent to the principal’s office. When he told the teacher off for Michael he got six weeks of detention, but when he told Michael off for Justin, he got a quasi relationship that went well into five years.
The worst part of it all was that Michael could never legitimately hate Justin. He didn’t have a reason to, other than the fact that the kid technically stole his entire childhood as he knew it away from him, and with just one pair of glitter covered shoulders. Sure Justin would smirk over Brian’s shoulder sometimes with Michael as his target, but it never went much further than that. Fuck, Michael knows that if it’d been him, he would’ve gloated to hell and back.
And that’s what made it even worse: Justin had always seemed so much older than any of them truly were.
and he took from you, and he never gave back a thing.
Arguing was not a new thing for the two of them. Michael knew this. He’d heard them argue too many times to count: Brian bitching about the calories in something Justin was trying to cook, Justin pissed off that Brian had moved his paints around on him again. But the one time Michael heard them fight -- really fucking fight -- they were standing on the back porch of Debbie’s place, during one of the group’s usual “family” get togethers.
Everyone at the table could hear them, and for the first half of the conversation, there were attempts made to cover up the shouting and angry footsteps drifting in from outside: Debbie’s house wasn’t exactly insulated in the best of ways. Michael remembered Vic ‘fixed’ the shoddy insulation in 1989, but. Well. Anyways. So, they’d listened to their arguing, Emmett’s ears perkier than ever.
“Don’t give me that bullshit, you fucking dick,” Justin had said, still surprisingly calm at that point.
It wasn’t hard to imagine the sour expression on Brian’s face as he laughed, lighting a cigarette, “What is this, another Sunshine needs attention thing?”
“Fuck you. Fuck you, you fucking...” Justin trailed off, and let out a frustrated groan. “I could kill you sometimes!”
The sound of Brian walking across the porch, floor boards creaking as he moved from one end to the other. “You wouldn’t.”
“Funny that I’m getting closer to doing it every day,” Justin snapped, trailing after him.
It was quieter than the rest of their words, but to Michael, nothing had ever been as loud as when Brian said, “You might not have to.”
“Why are you joking about it?” Justin had asked, voice raw in all the wrong places. Michael saw Justin’s eyebrows knotting up as he shook his head in confusion. “Is this how you’re coping? A fake vacation and a handful of pain pill cocktail?”
A classic Kinney smirk before a joyous, “I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
Michael knew that if he had the fortune of a drink in his hand, Brian would have given a smiley ‘cheers!’
“Oh yeah?” Justin asked, and then the sound of more creaky floorboards. “And what happens if you do have it, huh? What happens if its spread because the doctors didn’t see it?”
For the first time in their argument, there was an unsure beat of silence, before,
“Then I die.”
Michael’s heart sunk in his chest, and he had a feeling that Justin’s had too. If it had been him arguing with Brian, he knew he would’ve been crying by that point. But the strength behind Justin was still evident as he spoke, and it surprised Michael. It surprised them all, but that was how it had always been. Justin was never one to pussy foot around Brian, he’d rather take him head on, throwing insults and sarcasm around in the same careless way.
“Yeah? And what about me, huh?” Justin asked, voice strong.
Brian laughed, and Michael heard him blow out what he guessed was cigarette smoke before answering, “What about you?”
“Selfish prick,” Justin spat, and it sounded like he hit Brian, gently but still beautifully aware. “I’ll kill you before the Cancer does.”
Another moment of silence, and then, softly, “Have at it, Sunshine.”
And this is the thanks you get for saving his life. If you ask me, it wasn’t worth it,
Michael walked in on some... thing, once, at the loft. It hadn’t been an orgy, though that would’ve been easier to swallow. The two of them were fucking running round, and Brian had been high, it was obvious just from the smell and feel of the air, so it shouldn’t have been that surprising that he’d fall prey to the not so long running game of “Justin stole my joint.”
He’d managed to stand inside of the door long enough for Brian to trip over the rug and in turn smash into the couch before Justin fell into the bed laughing, and Brian shouted something about him putting a hole in the duvet because of the ash. When Brian didn’t get up from the floor for a long while, choosing instead to spread his arms and legs out like some version of a snow angel, Justin rolled off the bed with the joint in his mouth, and crawled down the stairs to join the elongated body.
Instead of spreading out on the floor beside him, Justin had curled up half on top of Brian, the joint still balanced between his fingers. And it was seeing Brian’s arm wrap around Justin’s shoulders with no aid of the drugs in his system that made Michael leave, trying to slide the door closed as quietly as possible behind him.
you might as well have just left him lying there.
As soon as the words had left Michael’s mouth, he knew he’d made a mistake. The flash in Brian’s eyes before the pain he felt blooming in his mouth, and then he was on the floor and trying to figure out what the fuck had just happened. He knew what had happened: he had fucked up. Big time.
See, the first time Michael saw Brian cry, it was at the hand of his father. They were thirteen, and Brian had spilled iced tea from the pitcher as he was pouring it into two odd glasses. The last time Michael ever saw Brian cry was at the hospital, the moment after they thought it all ended. Blood on his lips, and Michael hadn’t been sure how it had gotten there, but it made his stomach hurt to think about. Brian’s mouth against Justin’s bloody body, trying to live again. That maybe, maybe Brian wasn’t as indestructible as either of them had originally thought. That maybe their entire universe wasn’t hard to break at all.
That night was the last time Michael ever saw Brian in that hospital wing, with those tears in his eyes.
...
The stairwell to Brian’s front door looks alarmingly like it did the last time Justin saw it. Plain in an architecturally complicated way, pale floor and matching walls. As Justin is sliding the elevator door down, which has now begun to squeak, he notices, Brian pulls open the heavy steel door one-handed, the other holding a phone to his ear. Justin half-smiles as a hello, and slides his hands into his pockets as he walks inside.
“I don’t give two shits, Theodore, I want those reports on my desk tonight. Well, tell Ryan that if he doesn’t have the spread sheets ready for you he’s fired -- or better yet, why don’t you make them yourself? You’re a big boy now, after all.” He walks over to his desk, and after closing the front door behind him, Justin sees that it’s covered with papers, stacked high on either side with thick books and proof copy catalogues of photographs. Brian reaches forward and takes a paper from the top, flipping it around to see the image right side up. His hips pop out a little as he relaxes, and it makes Justin want to look away. “Look, you don’t want to break character, do you? Good old reliable Teddy? I was paraphrasing, Theodore, I didn’t actually call you Teddy. I know. Let Ryan know he’s got five hours, and if he has a problem with it to not let the door hit him in the ass on the way out.”
Brian hangs up the phone without bothering with the goodbyes, and Justin can’t believe he was talking to Ted like that. So comfortably. Without that much hidden disdain, a regular amount in the universe of Brian Kinney.
“So,” Brian smirks, turning around with the proof still in his hands. Justin shifts. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”
Justin shrugs, scratching at the back of his neck. Nervous habits develop at the worst of times. “I’m just in town for my mom’s birthday.”
“Sure you are,” Brian agrees, nodding once before he looks back down at his proof copy. Justin’s stomach tightens.
There’s silence then, because neither of them knows how to fill it. Justin watches Brian study the proof carefully, and when it becomes obvious that Brian doesn’t seem to feel like carrying on the conversation, Justin shrugs again and says, “I was on Liberty Avenue, went to the Diner...” He trails off because he can’t imagine trying to get what he’s feeling into words. There’s just no way to describe it without tearing his heart out and putting it on display. “I can’t believe how much it’s changed.”
“Well,” Brian shorts, glancing away from the proof. “That’s what happens when Deb isn’t there to retain the homo.”
Coping, Justin thinks, and lets it pass. Instead of replying with what he knows Brian wants him to say, he crosses his arms over his chest and asks, “Do you go anymore?”
Brian smirks and laughs, “Go where?”, and his eyebrows are raised as he flips the proof around again, glancing down at it once more. Justin knows that there’s no real method to what he’s doing, he’s just desperately trying to avoid having a conversation face to face.
“The Diner. Woody’s,” Justin cuts himself off before he adds Babylon? and instead finds himself tripping over one short word as he asks, “Clubs?”
Dropping the proof to his side, Brian walks around to the back of his desk, body obscured by the stacks of paper and computer monitor. Building walls, leaving it up to Justin to break them back down again. Brian shakes his head and asks, looking out of the corner of his eyes, “What are you doing here, Justin?”
“Truth?” Justin asks, squinting a little even though the sun is nowhere to be found. He shrugs when Brian doesn’t reply, and says, “I have no idea.”
Brian laughs, and under his breath mutters, “You and me both.”
“I’m sorry we lost touch,” Justin tries, taking a step towards the desk. Brian looks down at the proof when Justin moves, and keeps his eyes on the tag line.
It gives Justin a chance to look around the loft, just taking everything in at a glance. Brian has completely redecorated. Even the kitchen has been gutted. It was the one thing that had truly never changed before, still that base of stainless steel and aluminum.
“Don’t,” Brian growls, looking up. Justin looks away from the kitchen, surprised. They lock eyes. “You have your own life in New York.”
Justin uncrosses his arms, and reaches forward to lean against the desk with his hands. It creaks, but it doesn’t shift or move. Brian stays stoic as Justin says, his voice so carefully quiet, “Yeah, but I had one here, too.”
Brian looks up from the proof, eyebrows knotted and mouth halfway open, like he’s challenging Justin’s stupidity. Or just pointing it out. He raises an eyebrow and asks, “Did you hear what you just said? Had. You don’t have to hover around like some teenager anymore. You’re free now.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Justin asks, forehead wrinkling. Blue eyes flashing.
But they both know.
“Look, if you don’t mind,” Brian raises his eyebrows and points to the proof in one hand with the other. Justin pushes away from the desk, and lets his arms drop to his sides as he watches Brian defenseless, his mind racing. When did everything change so drastically? When did everyone change, and leave Justin behind? “Tell your mother I wish her a happy birthday,” Brian shrugs, tossing the proof onto his desk before he turns around, one hand lodged in the back of his hair.
Justin watches him move towards the stairs of the bedroom, now flanked by furniture that Justin doesn’t recognize anymore.
“Why do you avoid conversation at all cost, huh?” He calls, talking to Brian’s back.
But Brian is rapidly disappearing into the darkness of his bedroom. New bed, Justin thinks idly, but has his thoughts interrupted when Brian shouts, beginning to get irritated, “We’re no longer a couple, Justin, I don’t have to deal with this anymore.”
“What?” Justin calls, moving away from the desk altogether. He follows the path Brian drew, and ends up in the bedroom doorway. Brian glances down at him from where he stands on the raised platform, down at Justin’s confused face. “Now that we aren’t together, you’ve actually managed to acknowledge that we were?”
A grin. That fucking cocky grin that Brian would use around the fiddler. It comes out in full force as he explains, “Four years of therapy, Sunshine. It works wonders.”
“Why can’t you just talk?” Justin snaps, moving to stand on the first step. He can see the fear beginning to grow in Brian’s eyes: he’s boxed himself in.
But true to character Brian hides the fear with sarcasm as he walks around to the other side of the bed, the one closest to the closet, and asks, “Talk about what? You? That’s all you came here for, so you wouldn’t have to feel sorry any longer. We’ve talked already, Justin. I fucked you for Christ’s sake.” There’s a beat of silence and the fear in Brian’s eyes flickers to sadness, but flashes back again. “Believe me, I’m fine.”
“You’re still playing that card?” Justin snorts, taking another step up. Brian moves towards the second doorway of the bedroom, the hand back in his hair. “The ‘I don’t need anyone, I’m Brian Fucking Kinney’ one?” Brian is dangerously close to the door, so Justin takes another step inside, and rests the palm of his hand against the door frame. “I thought Michael dealt that one out a long time ago.”
That breaks it: snaps the situation in half. Brian moves out of the bedroom quickly, and begins to stalk over to the kitchen, body angry. Justin turns around just in time to see Brian spit over his shoulder, “Mikey dealt a lot of things out a long time ago.”
“Why don’t you talk to him anymore?” Justin asks, switching gears and following. Moving from the stairs, towards the kitchen counter to where Brian has begun to pour himself a drink. Bottoms up, Justin thinks sorely. He leans against the front of the counter and tries to look up at Brian’s face, hidden by a shot glass. “To anyone.”
A grimace as Brian swallows the hard liquid, and then,
“Look, what the fuck are you trying to do? Is there a purpose to this? Because honestly, I’d rather just get drunk.”
Justin motions to the Vodka bottle and nods, saying, “Good to see you curbed the alcoholism before it really took over.”
“Fine, darling Justin Taylor,” Brian spits, patience finally waived. “Talk to me, so I can get you out of my house.”
One second is all it takes.
“You’re the one who let me in,” Justin says, and it’s out before he can stop it. He hears the air rush past his ears, and as the color of Brian’s eyes change, his heart begins to speed up, and suddenly everything has flipped back to square one once more. Brian narrows his eyes at Justin from where he still stands behind the counter, and grimaces.
This time it isn’t thanks to the alcohol.
“Well I promise that’s not a mistake I’ll be making twice.”
...
“I got bored,” He smirked, throwing one arm around Michael as he dug a cigarette out of his pocket with his free hand.
Emmett had flipped one palm over, and looked sideways at Teddy. His voice had been airy as he joked, “I know. Getting your dick sucked can be so tedious.”
Like always Michael all but disappeared under Brian’s arm, curved around his shoulders, laughing at Emmett as they stepped off the curb: first Brian, the Michael, Emmett following and finally Ted. It was the way of the world, back then.
Michael glanced up at Brian and raised his eyebrows, mouth smiling. “Well, he looked pretty hot to me.”
“Anyone’d look hot to you,” Brian smirked, awkwardly speaking around the cigarette between his teeth. He let go of Michael and moved to the driver’s seat of the Jeep, paused to bend over and look around in his pocket for the lighter that he remembered putting in when he left his place.
Emmett and Ted were in the backseat giggling about something when Brian finally climbed in, still preoccupied with the lighter.
“Woody’s?” Michael had asked, slamming the Jeep door closed, his world never jarring.
Brian rolled his eyes and wrinkled his forehead, letting the cigarette drop from his mouth. What good was a cigarette without a lighter?
“I could so go for some greasy food at the Diner right now,” Emmett sung, throwing one lanky arm around Ted’s shoulders. After looking appropriately disgusted, Brian switched the engine over and pulled away from the curb. In a stage whisper, Emmett leaned forward and hissed in Michael’s ear, “Look. He doesn’t get laid, so now he’s brooding.”
Snorting, Michael had covered his grin up with a cough as Brian grimaced and replied, “The blowjobs at Babylon have been abysmal lately. There must be something in the water.”
“Or the cum,” Ted snorted, rolling his eyes.
A slap to the arm and Emmett was squealing, making Brian cringe. “Teddy!”
“What?”
Brian caught Michael’s gaze in the Jeep mirror and smirked, rolling his eyes.
And that was how it could have been.
...
Justin stays in Pittsburgh for his mother’s birthday, and for the next week after that. What had originally been a one-off turns into something more overnight, something that Justin doesn’t want to just pick out of his bones and flick back to New York. He calls Will once or twice, Will who is mostly preoccupied with work, Will who has landed one of the bigger clients from the party that night. The night that seems like years ago now. What used to be years ago now seems like another lifetime altogether, when Justin was seventeen and invincible.
He hasn’t talked to Brian since leaving the loft, not before this phone call. Justin says things like how he thinks he might move home for a while, because he just feels so detached from everything lately. Brian asks him how detached one person can get in five years, but Justin can’t think of an answer so he doesn’t reply. He knows Brian understands, Brian understands the same way Justin knows why he’s avoiding the fact that Justin turned up at the loft at all. There’s an odd softness to his voice, now.
“So is the great Brian Kinney ever going to turn up in the Big City?” Justin asks, leaning against the counter in his mother’s kitchen, the cord wrapped around his waist so her yappy dog can’t get to it. Justin has a feeling Brian would hate the little rat like thing.
Half-distracted would be an understatement where Brian is concerned, because Justin can almost see the proof in Brian’s hand as he shrugs, “You never know.”
“Speaking from a business point of view,” Justin offers, filling blanks in the conversation. He puts on a voice that would have rivaled Gardner Vance himself and adds, “I think that now would be the best time to act.”
A soft, unexpected laugh on the other side of the line, but Justin knows Brian’s trying to muffle it away from the phone anyways. He clears his throat and bites the laughter down, shuffling through the stack of paper that Theodore had earlier set in front of him, and says, “From a business point of view, huh?” A pause. “I’ll consider it.”
“Brian,” Justin whispers, but everything is louder through the phone. Breathing. Crying. Breaking.
It’s not as soft as the laughter, but for once it isn’t hesitant either, as Brian replies, “What?”
“Please come to New York.”
Another beat of silence, and Justin can feel the nervousness growing in his stomach. It starts behind his belly button, blooming out until he can feel clicking teeth in his finger tips, and his toes are dancing against his mother’s floor. But then,
“Wait a second--”
Justin can’t place the tone behind Brian’s voice. it’s as unknown as,
“What?”
A stretch of silence. Then, Brian’s voice, rid of the sarcasm but full of fake confusion, “Why, I think I’ve found a portal in the fabric of time, and, somehow, I’ve fallen eight years into the past.”
Justin exhales, pressing a hard to his forehead as he laughs breathlessly. Says, “It’s pretty ridiculous, isn’t it.”
“Yeah,” Brian whispers, and Justin can hear the tongue pressing against the inside of his cheek. “You could say that.”
Quiet then, because neither of them know if there’s anything left to say. Justin thinks of all the things he told Brian when they were together, and all of the things he never managed to when they were apart. Suddenly nothing seems as important as the conversation they’re having now, not the fiddlers or the bashers or the anything elses. Now they’re speaking like they’re both adults, no longer the petulant child and the boy who never wanted to grow up.
Justin doesn’t know how to put this thought into words, but he tries.
“Look, if you think the only reason I want you to come is to--”
Cutting him of, Brian interrupts, “I know.”
“But if you want, I would get--” He’s still trying to explain. He can still hear the papers shuffling, today’s proof.
Brian cuts him off again. “I know.”
Chewing his lip, Justin leans against the kitchen counter, and looks across at the fridge. There is no picture of he and Brian together, or anyone from when there was nothing but Liberty. Instead there’s a photo of him alone at seventeen, and he remembers it was the night before he went to Babylon for the first time. His mother would never know by looking at the picture, but Justin will never forget.
Justin lets go of his lip, leaving it red and beginning to swell as he listens to Brian exhale. He smiles, and, “Then say it.”
A snort. Justin’s not surprised that Brian is confused. He doesn’t know what he’s doing either, for the first time in The Relationship of Brian Kinney and Justin Taylor, he doesn’t have a plan to follow. There is no second fuck to score, and Michael isn’t waiting in the wings, positioned for that moment that Justin turns his back. There is no crack echoing through a ballroom parkade.
“Say what?” Brian asks, not knowing for a second of the thoughts in Justin’s head.
A smile grows as Justin turns away from the fridge, and leans on his hips against the front of the counter. He’s older, now. He can do this properly.
“Say you’ll come,” He whispers, raising his eyebrows. In the glass of the cabinet above him, his own face reflects back.
Brian is simply quiet for a moment, a moment long enough for Justin to look himself in the eye, through the image printed on the face of his mother’s best china. Roses.
“I wouldn’t be able to open the office until Spring.”
Shrugging, Justin looks away from the plates, and out the window. He smiles and says, “I’ll help you plan.”
“And I’d probably lose the next six month’s profit,” Brian adds, petulant to find an appropriate reason.
Justin is almost laughing as he says, “It’s only six months.”
“And...” Brian trails off, leaning back in his chair. A long moment, before he slaps the top of his desk with the stack of paper in his hand, and his body jerks back. “And I have no other cons. Give me one.”
Pretending to think hard, Justin leans forward, curling into himself as he smiles and whispers, “I can’t think of any.”
“How long are you in the Pitts for?” Brian asks, and Justin hears the chair squeak.
Laughing for real now, Justin straightens up, and reaches for the keys to his mother’s car. Seventeen isn’t so far away as he replies, “Long enough.”
*******
The End
Written By: yoursweater
Timeline: Post Ep-513
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: None
Genre Angst, romance
Seventeen, part 3
Part III.
Pittsburgh isn’t as shiny as it used to be. Hasn’t been in a while.
Brian throws his suit jacket over the back of a kitchen stool and unbuttons his shirt, the loft smelling stale from being left alone for two days. Justin is still on his clothes, and he pretends that he doesn’t breathe in the smell of his suit shirt before letting it drop to the floor.
The cleaner’s can wait until tomorrow, because all that Brian wants right now is a shower.
(The shower is the only thing Brian wants in Pittsburgh.)
...
In New York City everything moves fast: the people, the transportation, the trends.
“I’m thinking of going back to Pittsburgh for my mom’s birthday next week,” Justin says, talking over Will’s newspaper, opened to the stock market. Justin doesn’t understand the fucking stock market, but that’s okay because in all honesty he doesn’t really care, either.
He wipes the paint from his hands with a spare cloth, and waits for Will to say something.
Just say something.
“Yeah,” He shrugs, not bothering to look up from his paper.
Later that night Justin accidentally spills a can of red paint over Will’s new European plush sofa. Justin didn’t see it there, Will. He swears.
With his fingers crossed behind his back.
...
When Justin left Brian the second to last time, it was the hardest. Because there was no baseball bat pushing Brian to the side, and there was no fiddler to cart Justin off into the sunset. There wasn’t even a campaign designed to tear them apart, or a nameless fuck in the third aisle of Liberty Grocery.
There was just Justin. And that was what hurt the most. There was no dramatic reason for them to end it, that time: because the fact was, Justin wasn’t happy.
Brian would have gladly dealt with another musician type over that.
And as Rage stands at the precipice - -
He had decided to blame that one on Michael, because it was the easiest way to deal. That was the last of Mikey as he knew it, though. He remembers that’s when the feelings changed, and nothing was really, truly the same way again.
...
With the exception of Ted, nobody catches on to what happened in New York. Not like there are a lot of people left to do so, but Brian wouldn’t have put it past Emmett to at least squeal a little. Actually, all in all he’s generally surprised that Theodore hasn’t let that one slip, to Blake at least.
Had it happened six years ago:
“You little fuckin’ shit!” Debbie would’ve squawked, but Brian would be able to see that smile underneath her scowl, because he figured she’d think it was the beginning of something new. That was the only way Debbie worked, the only way Brian knew her. “Well is he coming back, then?”
And Brian would have avoided the subject at all costs, instead opting to grab his black coffee and run.
Sometimes he wishes he hadn’t run away from Debbie so often, because he misses her now. And yeah, fuck you, maybe he does want to hear that sharp voice again, or at least see her slap Michael. That’s all he really wants lately, anyways.
But it doesn’t happen six years ago. It happens now. So this is how it goes instead:
“Brian, you’ve got a meeting in conference room one,” Cynthia says, poking her head through the door of Brian’s office. He looks up from the screen of his computer. He hasn’t been sleeping that well since he got back from New York, and hasn’t had the energy to track down enough weed to put him into a kind of mind frame that makes him feel normal.
Nodding and half waving his hand, he goes back to signing the papers before she has a chance to close the door.
Conference room one can wait for him, goddamnit. It’s the one thing he knows will.
...
The day Brian found out he wasn’t going to die from Cancer was the day Justin punched him in the side and gave him a bruise for a week.
“What the fuck was that for, you little shit?” Brian had shouted, half bent over and clutching at his side. The meds made him puke a whole fucking lot, and he wanted to throw a returning punch but figured he’d rather keep his insides inside. At least until there was no other choice, and he was bent over the toilet against his will.
Justin stuck a finger in his face, and that was when Brian knew the kid had been hanging around Debbie too much.
“I would’ve killed you if it was terminal, you know,” He’d managed, and then Brian couldn’t breathe because his mouth was pressed into Justin, and Justin was squeezing so fucking hard it made Brian’s sides hurt. He pulled back because it was reflex, but then Justin was tugging harder, and Brian let him because of the meds made him weak... and the. The everything.
Slowly Brian began to hug back. He closed his eyes and breathed through his nose, and the only reason he did it was because he could.
He wasn’t dead yet.
...
The day Justin arrived in New York, he did so with an ache in his stomach.
As soon as he’d stepped off the plane he could feel that the air was different, the way it touched his skin and how it moved down his throat and through his lungs -- it was all different. The air in New York made everything louder somehow, made every little sound pinch his ears painfully. The air made everything just a little harder to swallow.
He found a taxi, pulled the piece of wrinkled paper from his pocket. The name, an address and a phone number, but that’s all it was. Nothing else but everything that he knew he should want.
The driver knew where it was, so two twenty dollar bills later Justin found himself standing on a wet sidewalk, wide-eyed and back on Liberty Avenue for the first time. He’d swallowed the lump in his throat and remembered how Debbie had assured him that Pittsburgh was only forty minutes away. And then he pushed his finger against the doorbell. Inside, he heard the ring echo down the front hall.
He stood there for fifteen minutes, but nobody answered.
(Everything worked out, eventually. He just sat and waited for someone to come by, and it turned out to be Daphne’s friend [I’m Jack] on the first try of, “Hey, can you help me?...”
So later that night Justin scratched the back of his neck and curled up on the side of the thin mattress, smelling of mildew of mould, and he watched the display screen light up on his cell phone. Jumped only a little bit when it began to ring.
When he had kissed his mother’s cheek and said goodbye earlier that day, he was still feeling okay. Debbie had threatened him, lightly slapping his cheek, and even then all that he felt was a little pang of something beginning to grow in his stomach. When he said goodbye to everyone at the airport there were no tears in his eyes, even though Emmett had been bawling. And when he left Pittsburgh, he didn’t cry. He only felt the slightest bit homesick when his plane landed, and the flight assistant welcomed him to New York.
But then he was laying on the mildewed mattress, and the cheesy two-tone rendition of 2001: A Space Odyssey was vibrating his cell right across the table beside his bed, and that’s the moment when the lump in his throat exploded. He had started to ache so deep that he couldn’t even be pissed off that Brian had changed the tone a-fucking-gain. But he couldn’t laugh, either.
The last thing he ever considered was actually answering it.
Brian phoned a week later, as well, and Justin remembers their conversation still:
“Hi,” Justin had said, hearing Brian exhale slowly, say hi back. “You alright?”
“Never been better,” Brian lied, saying it through clenched teeth. “So how’s New York fit?”
An awkward laugh as Justin whispered, “Kind of loose,” and heard Ted bumbling around in the background of Brian’s office. He felt Brian’s breath on his neck as he heard the loud exhale through the phone. “Or maybe it’s too tight, depending on how you look at it.”
Brian’s laughter was tense and Justin heard Cynthia tell him about the meeting with Cool Optics in ten minutes.
And after a quiet later, that was the end of that.)
But now he’s in Pittsburgh again, not-so-glittery-Pittsburgh, and somehow the air is cleaner than it is in New York, and there are actually trees that have been alive for more than forty years. It doesn’t feel like home yet, but it feels better.
On the plane he had been nervous, twisting the ticket envelope in his fingers, blinking too much as he watched the ground from the sky, thought that it seemed as though it was an entire universe beneath them, and not just the world. He had wondered what time had done to everyone so far, Ted and Brian excluded, and tried to make an excuse as to why he hadn’t been back yet. He knew that they would all fall short.
For a second he wondered what Debbie will say to him, but then he remembered what his mother had told him just days previous over the phone, teary voice and all.
He misses Debbie a lot, sometimes.
...
Sometimes he would miss Brian. Not that he would ever admit it, because he’d had what he wanted as far as anyone else was concerned. But he’d be lying in that mattress on the floor, and he would offhandedly think Brian in the most defenseless of ways. It left him breathless sometimes. But that was as it always had been, Brian had always found the perfect way to get the perfect reaction.
“Do you think about him anymore?” Ethan would ask in his own moments of weakness, because even though he would pretend like they were had the perfect homo relationship, Justin knew that he was still scared. Scared Justin would change his mind at a hair’s notice and go back to the huge loft, the huge banking account.
But he never would. He would never go back to the loft. Or the banking account. Or the anything. The only thing he ever thought about was going back to Brian.
And it wasn’t like he meant to. He never meant to hurt Ethan: all he had wanted to do was move on, get over the one hopeless high school crush that had dictated the remainder of his life. Then again he had also always wanted to learn a second language, but he never really found himself getting very far in that. One day, way back before Ethan, Justin had almost thought that he was fluent in Kinney Speak. And he had been. Sometimes he just forgot how to work the manual.
Funny how sometimes it only takes a second to remember.
But the fact still remained that sometimes Ethan would ask that question -- do you think about him anymore -- and Justin would falter and find himself squirming, because one thing that he never wanted to do was lie to Ethan. Nobody deserved that. Justin had been lied to, and he knew how it felt. Maybe it was never Brian who lied, but regardless. He knew how it felt.
So he’d whisper “sometimes” and shrug, pressing his mouth to the place where Ethan’s chest met his neck.
...
The moment Justin realizes it’s all changed is when he goes to the Liberty Diner. Truthfully he had been expecting Emmett and Ted in one booth, with Brian and Michael in the next. Hunter clearing the dishes from the counters, Justin Taylor: Version Two, while Debbie took orders. Like always.
But this is what Justin does see: the booths are filled with faces that he doesn’t know. And nobody knows him either, which throws him for a moment. I was Brian fucking Kinney’s boyfriend, I’m the one who saved you from Stockwell so you could wave your fucking flags, he wants to snap, and he almost does before he realizes that maybe they don’t know The Great Legends either, maybe the time has already passed. And it has. Because Debbie isn’t there, Hunter sure as hell isn’t either, and Justin doesn’t even know the waitress who’s working the busiest table, some petite thing that looks mildly frightened.
Nobody used to be scared in Liberty Diner. It was home.
“Can I help you?” The waitress asks, raising her eyebrows and her order pad in Justin’s direction.
He feels his throat tightening as he looks around: the Kickapoo Joy Juice sign is still the same, still hanging over the booth that the so-called ‘regulars’ used to sit in. The framed advertisement that has always been Justin’s favorite: huge and bright, everything he used to think Liberty Avenue was.
“No... no,” He forces a smile and shakes his head. “I’m just looking for someone.”
She smiles back and nods, moving to the next table to scribble down the elaborate order of four leather queens. Justin watches her with a New York sized lump in his throat. And it isn’t even the worst part that everything has changed, everything but that fucking sign at least. The worst part is that he remembers everything.
He remembers everything.
...
He didn’t expect the relationship he had with Ethan to end like that. Not after the roses and the promises and the fucking ring on top of it all. And maybe Brian had never given him any of those things, never came close in doing so as a matter of fact, but at least Brian had never lied.
Justin met Ethan by accident, at the hand of the lesbians for fucks sake. If everything had been different in the world of Brian Kinney and Justin Taylor, it wouldn’t have happened at all: because Justin wouldn’t have been with the Munchers, wouldn’t have been with Lindsay and Mel. He would’ve been celebrating his fucking birthday with his fucking boyfriend, whether Brian wanted to admit to it or not that was what he was. And in Justin’s perfect world, he did.
But reality wasn’t Justin’s perfect world. It hadn’t been at that point, anyways. And so it happened. He met Ethan, and felt that pinch in his stomach of ‘maybe there is something better than Brian, maybe I have been kidding myself all this time.’ Because what had Brian given him, really? A clubbed head, and more heart ache than he cared to remember. And as soon as he thought of that, found himself thinking about it in the most desperate of ways, he felt sick to the stomach, fucking disgusted with himself for even imagining it.
So he fell in love with Ethan. Or, “love” as Brian had put it during those couple of months. Always with the sarcastic sneer, his own hurt hidden behind thinly veiled sarcasm. Justin knew exactly what was going on, but truth be told he had been too involved in the roses and the promises and the [fucking] ring to care. And yeah, he grew up a lot then, without Brian. He grew up and he figured some things out even though he was still clueless about others, and it was probably for the better but sometimes he couldn’t help but think you fucking idiot, Justin, to imagine that he could get by without those goddamned explosions.
And maybe sometimes he thinks about Will, and he remembers things about Brian, and he wonders how the fuck everything has happened. How New York happened, and why the wedding never did. He wonders what would have happened if they had gotten married. He doesn’t exactly want to be married anymore, refuses to be tied down for that long to someone who... well. He’s grown up and maybe he’s a little lonely sometimes, but he’d rather be alone sometimes with Will around, than to be alone all the time by himself.
That’s just how New York fit.
....
He walks past Debbie’s house because he isn’t sure of what else to do. The red door has been repainted chocolate brown, and all of the wooden trim is now cream. Justin stands behind the iron fence for a while and watches, just remembering, until the living room curtain shifts and he realizes that Debbie doesn’t live there anymore, that he isn’t welcome. As he tugs his jacket closer to his neck, he thinks that Pittsburgh isn’t as cold as New York, but it’s almost as bad. He watches the sidewalk moving beneath him as he thinks, and pushes off the feeling of a hand creeping around the side of his neck.
It’s then, in that very moment, that he realizes he should’ve come back. If not for Brian than for everybody else, himself included. He hasn’t seen Mel and Linds and the kids since they moved, and that was such bullshit of him to say that he’d go up for a visit. Even then he knew he wouldn’t. But it had seemed like the right thing to say at the time, so he said it, even though in the end he never even saw them off. He had seen Brian, though, Brian’s fucking face after saying goodbye to his only son: the same son that he never thought he’d fall in love with in the first place.
Justin takes another turn and ends up on Liberty Avenue again, always flashy and trashy and the best of only one world. But it feels so different, like everyone has moved on from this one moment in time. He watches a group of friends going into the Diner, and they’re laughing and talking, and it’s all so stereotypical: the flamed out Queen, the boring like tea businessman, the one everyone loves like a brother, the one everyone wants to be. Justin shakes his head and cuts between the bookstore and a little bakery, through to the little alley that ends at the top of Tremont Street.
When he gets to the loft he realizes that for the first time he can’t just barge his way in, and interrupt Brian in the middle of whatever it is that he might be doing. Justin doesn’t have a key, doesn’t have an in, doesn’t have anything. Chewing his bottom lip, he watches the intercom panel for a moment, and it doesn’t move or talk or do tricks, so he does it. He just bites the fucking bullet. They fucked two weeks ago, the least they can do is talk. He presses the button to Brian’s loft, and waits.
“Yeah,” Brian answers, cutting himself off by letting go of the button. Justin hears the static that separates them so clearly, right then.
He leans his shoulder against the wall, and realizes that he has no idea what he wants to say. Or how to even begin.
“Uh. Hi. It’s Justin.”
Silence. Brian’s waiting.
“I was just walking, and. Well. You know how things go.”
It’s Justin who waits now, Justin who needs a response before he can go any further. Once he’s counted to ten in his head, there’s a buzz before Brian asks, “You walked all the way from New York? I could’ve sent you a ticket if you were that desperate, Sunshine.”
And then the door is opening, and the intercom is clicking off.
...
The night Justin got Brian to fuck him for the second time was the night the universe as Michael Novotny knew it came crashing down. Because it just didn’t happen: it was so out of character, for Brian to be won over like that. With some stupid dance, and that was what pissed Michael off the most, the fact that Justin had come in, covered and glitter and without a shirt, and caught Brian’s interest. His desire. Michael had fucking been there for the last hundred and ten years, been there through the beatings and the puking and the crying.
And all that Justin needed was glitter and hips to start barging his way in?
“What’s that boy doing?” Emmett had asked him, way back when everything still made sense. His voice had been full of awe as he watched the kid slink across the floor, wrapping himself around anyone who would let happen. Michael leaned against the railing of the Babylon catwalk, and he fucking hated himself for it, but he couldn’t look away.
That was what he remembered as when everything began. Brian had a life before Justin, sure. Brian had been full of moments and things and memories that Justin would never know or touch or remember. But for Michael, that moment in Babylon, that single song, was the one that began to lay the cement for everything that they would eventually compromise themselves into being. That was the night Brian Kinney began to change, and if he were to look back now, Michael would know for sure that had been it.
He’s a selfish little shit,
Michael saw them standing outside the Diner once, when Justin was still a big headed teenager, jumping around Brian in circles like some careless puppy. Brian had been smoking, or trying to at least, and Michael saw the smirk on his face, but pretended that it wasn’t there. Justin was saying something, telling a story with his hands as he moved around, shifting from Brian’s left side to his right, playing the devil and the angel in a dual performance.
When Brian got fed up, he hadn’t snapped off some perfectly timed comment before making a quick exit. He’d bit the cigarette between his teeth and reached out, grabbing Justin around the shoulders and jerking him close. Brian had never been that gentle, especially before the bashing, but there was affection in his brashness, and it showed when Justin started to laugh, and reached up to pull the cigarette from between Brian’s lips.
Brian blew smoke in the kid’s face as a response, but hugged him regardless.
He used you,
The thing that really threw Michael off was that Brian would make excuses for Justin. Brian never made excuses for anyone, himself included. The only other time Michael had heard anything that sounded even remotely like, “Would you lay off him Mikey, he’s just a kid,” had been in ninth grade, when Brian told their then math teacher off, with, “It’s not Mikey’s fault you can’t teach worth a shit,” and was sent to the principal’s office. When he told the teacher off for Michael he got six weeks of detention, but when he told Michael off for Justin, he got a quasi relationship that went well into five years.
The worst part of it all was that Michael could never legitimately hate Justin. He didn’t have a reason to, other than the fact that the kid technically stole his entire childhood as he knew it away from him, and with just one pair of glitter covered shoulders. Sure Justin would smirk over Brian’s shoulder sometimes with Michael as his target, but it never went much further than that. Fuck, Michael knows that if it’d been him, he would’ve gloated to hell and back.
And that’s what made it even worse: Justin had always seemed so much older than any of them truly were.
and he took from you, and he never gave back a thing.
Arguing was not a new thing for the two of them. Michael knew this. He’d heard them argue too many times to count: Brian bitching about the calories in something Justin was trying to cook, Justin pissed off that Brian had moved his paints around on him again. But the one time Michael heard them fight -- really fucking fight -- they were standing on the back porch of Debbie’s place, during one of the group’s usual “family” get togethers.
Everyone at the table could hear them, and for the first half of the conversation, there were attempts made to cover up the shouting and angry footsteps drifting in from outside: Debbie’s house wasn’t exactly insulated in the best of ways. Michael remembered Vic ‘fixed’ the shoddy insulation in 1989, but. Well. Anyways. So, they’d listened to their arguing, Emmett’s ears perkier than ever.
“Don’t give me that bullshit, you fucking dick,” Justin had said, still surprisingly calm at that point.
It wasn’t hard to imagine the sour expression on Brian’s face as he laughed, lighting a cigarette, “What is this, another Sunshine needs attention thing?”
“Fuck you. Fuck you, you fucking...” Justin trailed off, and let out a frustrated groan. “I could kill you sometimes!”
The sound of Brian walking across the porch, floor boards creaking as he moved from one end to the other. “You wouldn’t.”
“Funny that I’m getting closer to doing it every day,” Justin snapped, trailing after him.
It was quieter than the rest of their words, but to Michael, nothing had ever been as loud as when Brian said, “You might not have to.”
“Why are you joking about it?” Justin had asked, voice raw in all the wrong places. Michael saw Justin’s eyebrows knotting up as he shook his head in confusion. “Is this how you’re coping? A fake vacation and a handful of pain pill cocktail?”
A classic Kinney smirk before a joyous, “I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
Michael knew that if he had the fortune of a drink in his hand, Brian would have given a smiley ‘cheers!’
“Oh yeah?” Justin asked, and then the sound of more creaky floorboards. “And what happens if you do have it, huh? What happens if its spread because the doctors didn’t see it?”
For the first time in their argument, there was an unsure beat of silence, before,
“Then I die.”
Michael’s heart sunk in his chest, and he had a feeling that Justin’s had too. If it had been him arguing with Brian, he knew he would’ve been crying by that point. But the strength behind Justin was still evident as he spoke, and it surprised Michael. It surprised them all, but that was how it had always been. Justin was never one to pussy foot around Brian, he’d rather take him head on, throwing insults and sarcasm around in the same careless way.
“Yeah? And what about me, huh?” Justin asked, voice strong.
Brian laughed, and Michael heard him blow out what he guessed was cigarette smoke before answering, “What about you?”
“Selfish prick,” Justin spat, and it sounded like he hit Brian, gently but still beautifully aware. “I’ll kill you before the Cancer does.”
Another moment of silence, and then, softly, “Have at it, Sunshine.”
And this is the thanks you get for saving his life. If you ask me, it wasn’t worth it,
Michael walked in on some... thing, once, at the loft. It hadn’t been an orgy, though that would’ve been easier to swallow. The two of them were fucking running round, and Brian had been high, it was obvious just from the smell and feel of the air, so it shouldn’t have been that surprising that he’d fall prey to the not so long running game of “Justin stole my joint.”
He’d managed to stand inside of the door long enough for Brian to trip over the rug and in turn smash into the couch before Justin fell into the bed laughing, and Brian shouted something about him putting a hole in the duvet because of the ash. When Brian didn’t get up from the floor for a long while, choosing instead to spread his arms and legs out like some version of a snow angel, Justin rolled off the bed with the joint in his mouth, and crawled down the stairs to join the elongated body.
Instead of spreading out on the floor beside him, Justin had curled up half on top of Brian, the joint still balanced between his fingers. And it was seeing Brian’s arm wrap around Justin’s shoulders with no aid of the drugs in his system that made Michael leave, trying to slide the door closed as quietly as possible behind him.
you might as well have just left him lying there.
As soon as the words had left Michael’s mouth, he knew he’d made a mistake. The flash in Brian’s eyes before the pain he felt blooming in his mouth, and then he was on the floor and trying to figure out what the fuck had just happened. He knew what had happened: he had fucked up. Big time.
See, the first time Michael saw Brian cry, it was at the hand of his father. They were thirteen, and Brian had spilled iced tea from the pitcher as he was pouring it into two odd glasses. The last time Michael ever saw Brian cry was at the hospital, the moment after they thought it all ended. Blood on his lips, and Michael hadn’t been sure how it had gotten there, but it made his stomach hurt to think about. Brian’s mouth against Justin’s bloody body, trying to live again. That maybe, maybe Brian wasn’t as indestructible as either of them had originally thought. That maybe their entire universe wasn’t hard to break at all.
That night was the last time Michael ever saw Brian in that hospital wing, with those tears in his eyes.
...
The stairwell to Brian’s front door looks alarmingly like it did the last time Justin saw it. Plain in an architecturally complicated way, pale floor and matching walls. As Justin is sliding the elevator door down, which has now begun to squeak, he notices, Brian pulls open the heavy steel door one-handed, the other holding a phone to his ear. Justin half-smiles as a hello, and slides his hands into his pockets as he walks inside.
“I don’t give two shits, Theodore, I want those reports on my desk tonight. Well, tell Ryan that if he doesn’t have the spread sheets ready for you he’s fired -- or better yet, why don’t you make them yourself? You’re a big boy now, after all.” He walks over to his desk, and after closing the front door behind him, Justin sees that it’s covered with papers, stacked high on either side with thick books and proof copy catalogues of photographs. Brian reaches forward and takes a paper from the top, flipping it around to see the image right side up. His hips pop out a little as he relaxes, and it makes Justin want to look away. “Look, you don’t want to break character, do you? Good old reliable Teddy? I was paraphrasing, Theodore, I didn’t actually call you Teddy. I know. Let Ryan know he’s got five hours, and if he has a problem with it to not let the door hit him in the ass on the way out.”
Brian hangs up the phone without bothering with the goodbyes, and Justin can’t believe he was talking to Ted like that. So comfortably. Without that much hidden disdain, a regular amount in the universe of Brian Kinney.
“So,” Brian smirks, turning around with the proof still in his hands. Justin shifts. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”
Justin shrugs, scratching at the back of his neck. Nervous habits develop at the worst of times. “I’m just in town for my mom’s birthday.”
“Sure you are,” Brian agrees, nodding once before he looks back down at his proof copy. Justin’s stomach tightens.
There’s silence then, because neither of them knows how to fill it. Justin watches Brian study the proof carefully, and when it becomes obvious that Brian doesn’t seem to feel like carrying on the conversation, Justin shrugs again and says, “I was on Liberty Avenue, went to the Diner...” He trails off because he can’t imagine trying to get what he’s feeling into words. There’s just no way to describe it without tearing his heart out and putting it on display. “I can’t believe how much it’s changed.”
“Well,” Brian shorts, glancing away from the proof. “That’s what happens when Deb isn’t there to retain the homo.”
Coping, Justin thinks, and lets it pass. Instead of replying with what he knows Brian wants him to say, he crosses his arms over his chest and asks, “Do you go anymore?”
Brian smirks and laughs, “Go where?”, and his eyebrows are raised as he flips the proof around again, glancing down at it once more. Justin knows that there’s no real method to what he’s doing, he’s just desperately trying to avoid having a conversation face to face.
“The Diner. Woody’s,” Justin cuts himself off before he adds Babylon? and instead finds himself tripping over one short word as he asks, “Clubs?”
Dropping the proof to his side, Brian walks around to the back of his desk, body obscured by the stacks of paper and computer monitor. Building walls, leaving it up to Justin to break them back down again. Brian shakes his head and asks, looking out of the corner of his eyes, “What are you doing here, Justin?”
“Truth?” Justin asks, squinting a little even though the sun is nowhere to be found. He shrugs when Brian doesn’t reply, and says, “I have no idea.”
Brian laughs, and under his breath mutters, “You and me both.”
“I’m sorry we lost touch,” Justin tries, taking a step towards the desk. Brian looks down at the proof when Justin moves, and keeps his eyes on the tag line.
It gives Justin a chance to look around the loft, just taking everything in at a glance. Brian has completely redecorated. Even the kitchen has been gutted. It was the one thing that had truly never changed before, still that base of stainless steel and aluminum.
“Don’t,” Brian growls, looking up. Justin looks away from the kitchen, surprised. They lock eyes. “You have your own life in New York.”
Justin uncrosses his arms, and reaches forward to lean against the desk with his hands. It creaks, but it doesn’t shift or move. Brian stays stoic as Justin says, his voice so carefully quiet, “Yeah, but I had one here, too.”
Brian looks up from the proof, eyebrows knotted and mouth halfway open, like he’s challenging Justin’s stupidity. Or just pointing it out. He raises an eyebrow and asks, “Did you hear what you just said? Had. You don’t have to hover around like some teenager anymore. You’re free now.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Justin asks, forehead wrinkling. Blue eyes flashing.
But they both know.
“Look, if you don’t mind,” Brian raises his eyebrows and points to the proof in one hand with the other. Justin pushes away from the desk, and lets his arms drop to his sides as he watches Brian defenseless, his mind racing. When did everything change so drastically? When did everyone change, and leave Justin behind? “Tell your mother I wish her a happy birthday,” Brian shrugs, tossing the proof onto his desk before he turns around, one hand lodged in the back of his hair.
Justin watches him move towards the stairs of the bedroom, now flanked by furniture that Justin doesn’t recognize anymore.
“Why do you avoid conversation at all cost, huh?” He calls, talking to Brian’s back.
But Brian is rapidly disappearing into the darkness of his bedroom. New bed, Justin thinks idly, but has his thoughts interrupted when Brian shouts, beginning to get irritated, “We’re no longer a couple, Justin, I don’t have to deal with this anymore.”
“What?” Justin calls, moving away from the desk altogether. He follows the path Brian drew, and ends up in the bedroom doorway. Brian glances down at him from where he stands on the raised platform, down at Justin’s confused face. “Now that we aren’t together, you’ve actually managed to acknowledge that we were?”
A grin. That fucking cocky grin that Brian would use around the fiddler. It comes out in full force as he explains, “Four years of therapy, Sunshine. It works wonders.”
“Why can’t you just talk?” Justin snaps, moving to stand on the first step. He can see the fear beginning to grow in Brian’s eyes: he’s boxed himself in.
But true to character Brian hides the fear with sarcasm as he walks around to the other side of the bed, the one closest to the closet, and asks, “Talk about what? You? That’s all you came here for, so you wouldn’t have to feel sorry any longer. We’ve talked already, Justin. I fucked you for Christ’s sake.” There’s a beat of silence and the fear in Brian’s eyes flickers to sadness, but flashes back again. “Believe me, I’m fine.”
“You’re still playing that card?” Justin snorts, taking another step up. Brian moves towards the second doorway of the bedroom, the hand back in his hair. “The ‘I don’t need anyone, I’m Brian Fucking Kinney’ one?” Brian is dangerously close to the door, so Justin takes another step inside, and rests the palm of his hand against the door frame. “I thought Michael dealt that one out a long time ago.”
That breaks it: snaps the situation in half. Brian moves out of the bedroom quickly, and begins to stalk over to the kitchen, body angry. Justin turns around just in time to see Brian spit over his shoulder, “Mikey dealt a lot of things out a long time ago.”
“Why don’t you talk to him anymore?” Justin asks, switching gears and following. Moving from the stairs, towards the kitchen counter to where Brian has begun to pour himself a drink. Bottoms up, Justin thinks sorely. He leans against the front of the counter and tries to look up at Brian’s face, hidden by a shot glass. “To anyone.”
A grimace as Brian swallows the hard liquid, and then,
“Look, what the fuck are you trying to do? Is there a purpose to this? Because honestly, I’d rather just get drunk.”
Justin motions to the Vodka bottle and nods, saying, “Good to see you curbed the alcoholism before it really took over.”
“Fine, darling Justin Taylor,” Brian spits, patience finally waived. “Talk to me, so I can get you out of my house.”
One second is all it takes.
“You’re the one who let me in,” Justin says, and it’s out before he can stop it. He hears the air rush past his ears, and as the color of Brian’s eyes change, his heart begins to speed up, and suddenly everything has flipped back to square one once more. Brian narrows his eyes at Justin from where he still stands behind the counter, and grimaces.
This time it isn’t thanks to the alcohol.
“Well I promise that’s not a mistake I’ll be making twice.”
...
“I got bored,” He smirked, throwing one arm around Michael as he dug a cigarette out of his pocket with his free hand.
Emmett had flipped one palm over, and looked sideways at Teddy. His voice had been airy as he joked, “I know. Getting your dick sucked can be so tedious.”
Like always Michael all but disappeared under Brian’s arm, curved around his shoulders, laughing at Emmett as they stepped off the curb: first Brian, the Michael, Emmett following and finally Ted. It was the way of the world, back then.
Michael glanced up at Brian and raised his eyebrows, mouth smiling. “Well, he looked pretty hot to me.”
“Anyone’d look hot to you,” Brian smirked, awkwardly speaking around the cigarette between his teeth. He let go of Michael and moved to the driver’s seat of the Jeep, paused to bend over and look around in his pocket for the lighter that he remembered putting in when he left his place.
Emmett and Ted were in the backseat giggling about something when Brian finally climbed in, still preoccupied with the lighter.
“Woody’s?” Michael had asked, slamming the Jeep door closed, his world never jarring.
Brian rolled his eyes and wrinkled his forehead, letting the cigarette drop from his mouth. What good was a cigarette without a lighter?
“I could so go for some greasy food at the Diner right now,” Emmett sung, throwing one lanky arm around Ted’s shoulders. After looking appropriately disgusted, Brian switched the engine over and pulled away from the curb. In a stage whisper, Emmett leaned forward and hissed in Michael’s ear, “Look. He doesn’t get laid, so now he’s brooding.”
Snorting, Michael had covered his grin up with a cough as Brian grimaced and replied, “The blowjobs at Babylon have been abysmal lately. There must be something in the water.”
“Or the cum,” Ted snorted, rolling his eyes.
A slap to the arm and Emmett was squealing, making Brian cringe. “Teddy!”
“What?”
Brian caught Michael’s gaze in the Jeep mirror and smirked, rolling his eyes.
And that was how it could have been.
...
Justin stays in Pittsburgh for his mother’s birthday, and for the next week after that. What had originally been a one-off turns into something more overnight, something that Justin doesn’t want to just pick out of his bones and flick back to New York. He calls Will once or twice, Will who is mostly preoccupied with work, Will who has landed one of the bigger clients from the party that night. The night that seems like years ago now. What used to be years ago now seems like another lifetime altogether, when Justin was seventeen and invincible.
He hasn’t talked to Brian since leaving the loft, not before this phone call. Justin says things like how he thinks he might move home for a while, because he just feels so detached from everything lately. Brian asks him how detached one person can get in five years, but Justin can’t think of an answer so he doesn’t reply. He knows Brian understands, Brian understands the same way Justin knows why he’s avoiding the fact that Justin turned up at the loft at all. There’s an odd softness to his voice, now.
“So is the great Brian Kinney ever going to turn up in the Big City?” Justin asks, leaning against the counter in his mother’s kitchen, the cord wrapped around his waist so her yappy dog can’t get to it. Justin has a feeling Brian would hate the little rat like thing.
Half-distracted would be an understatement where Brian is concerned, because Justin can almost see the proof in Brian’s hand as he shrugs, “You never know.”
“Speaking from a business point of view,” Justin offers, filling blanks in the conversation. He puts on a voice that would have rivaled Gardner Vance himself and adds, “I think that now would be the best time to act.”
A soft, unexpected laugh on the other side of the line, but Justin knows Brian’s trying to muffle it away from the phone anyways. He clears his throat and bites the laughter down, shuffling through the stack of paper that Theodore had earlier set in front of him, and says, “From a business point of view, huh?” A pause. “I’ll consider it.”
“Brian,” Justin whispers, but everything is louder through the phone. Breathing. Crying. Breaking.
It’s not as soft as the laughter, but for once it isn’t hesitant either, as Brian replies, “What?”
“Please come to New York.”
Another beat of silence, and Justin can feel the nervousness growing in his stomach. It starts behind his belly button, blooming out until he can feel clicking teeth in his finger tips, and his toes are dancing against his mother’s floor. But then,
“Wait a second--”
Justin can’t place the tone behind Brian’s voice. it’s as unknown as,
“What?”
A stretch of silence. Then, Brian’s voice, rid of the sarcasm but full of fake confusion, “Why, I think I’ve found a portal in the fabric of time, and, somehow, I’ve fallen eight years into the past.”
Justin exhales, pressing a hard to his forehead as he laughs breathlessly. Says, “It’s pretty ridiculous, isn’t it.”
“Yeah,” Brian whispers, and Justin can hear the tongue pressing against the inside of his cheek. “You could say that.”
Quiet then, because neither of them know if there’s anything left to say. Justin thinks of all the things he told Brian when they were together, and all of the things he never managed to when they were apart. Suddenly nothing seems as important as the conversation they’re having now, not the fiddlers or the bashers or the anything elses. Now they’re speaking like they’re both adults, no longer the petulant child and the boy who never wanted to grow up.
Justin doesn’t know how to put this thought into words, but he tries.
“Look, if you think the only reason I want you to come is to--”
Cutting him of, Brian interrupts, “I know.”
“But if you want, I would get--” He’s still trying to explain. He can still hear the papers shuffling, today’s proof.
Brian cuts him off again. “I know.”
Chewing his lip, Justin leans against the kitchen counter, and looks across at the fridge. There is no picture of he and Brian together, or anyone from when there was nothing but Liberty. Instead there’s a photo of him alone at seventeen, and he remembers it was the night before he went to Babylon for the first time. His mother would never know by looking at the picture, but Justin will never forget.
Justin lets go of his lip, leaving it red and beginning to swell as he listens to Brian exhale. He smiles, and, “Then say it.”
A snort. Justin’s not surprised that Brian is confused. He doesn’t know what he’s doing either, for the first time in The Relationship of Brian Kinney and Justin Taylor, he doesn’t have a plan to follow. There is no second fuck to score, and Michael isn’t waiting in the wings, positioned for that moment that Justin turns his back. There is no crack echoing through a ballroom parkade.
“Say what?” Brian asks, not knowing for a second of the thoughts in Justin’s head.
A smile grows as Justin turns away from the fridge, and leans on his hips against the front of the counter. He’s older, now. He can do this properly.
“Say you’ll come,” He whispers, raising his eyebrows. In the glass of the cabinet above him, his own face reflects back.
Brian is simply quiet for a moment, a moment long enough for Justin to look himself in the eye, through the image printed on the face of his mother’s best china. Roses.
“I wouldn’t be able to open the office until Spring.”
Shrugging, Justin looks away from the plates, and out the window. He smiles and says, “I’ll help you plan.”
“And I’d probably lose the next six month’s profit,” Brian adds, petulant to find an appropriate reason.
Justin is almost laughing as he says, “It’s only six months.”
“And...” Brian trails off, leaning back in his chair. A long moment, before he slaps the top of his desk with the stack of paper in his hand, and his body jerks back. “And I have no other cons. Give me one.”
Pretending to think hard, Justin leans forward, curling into himself as he smiles and whispers, “I can’t think of any.”
“How long are you in the Pitts for?” Brian asks, and Justin hears the chair squeak.
Laughing for real now, Justin straightens up, and reaches for the keys to his mother’s car. Seventeen isn’t so far away as he replies, “Long enough.”
*******
The End