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So, once upon a time, burnitbackwards came up with this brilliant idea of writing fic for every day of the month of May up until the omgomgomg premiere of Queer as Folk on May 22. There is some amazing stuff being written for this challenge, and everyone should visit comingthengoing now. :D And uh, this would be my less-than-wonderful submission.
Title: At Times, Indeed, Almost Ridiculous
Rating: PG-13
Summary: "Sometimes people say that the end is inevitable."
Author's Notes: So many thanks to bea_nonymous, for betaing at the very last minute, and for being generally fabulous and supportive. I wub you. >:D< The title comes from the poem "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," by T.S. Eliot.
Warnings: This story takes the S5 plot after 507 and runs far, far away with it. Or spoilers through 507.
Sometimes people say that the end is inevitable. Brian has ended his relationship with Justin more times than he cares to think about. When he was feeling particularly sarcastic about it, he used to say that they broke up about every year. Only the last time they broke up, Justin hugged him and walked out and sent a moving truck for his things a week later and Brian thought he'd be back, because he always was, but weeks turned into months into years.
Brian hears about him sometimes, but not really, because he tunes out whenever Debbie talks about how successful her Sunshine is, or when Michael mentions the fact that Justin just emailed him last night, or when Lindsay says she just got an invitation to his next art show. There's no point in thinking about why. When Michael and Ben and Lindsay are absent during the same week that Justin's art is premiering in New York, he sits at the diner with Ted and Emmett and Melanie and pointedly avoids talking about anyone's absence.
He does think it's kind of hilarious in a fucking stupid way how boring his life is without Justin, though. He goes to work, and Woody's, and Babylon once in a while, but more often, he goes to Little League games, or has dinner with the munchers or Ben and Michael, and once, horror of horrors, he even had Gus and two of his six year old friends over. One of them got into his porn collection, and the other one threw up green chunks all over his couch, and he ended up bribing the lot of them with rocky road ice cream he didn't know he had before remembering that rocky road was Justin's second favorite ice cream flavor. The ice cream, he discovered, had a sort of inverse effect to what he wanted, but after three hours of them all running around screaming their heads off, they collapsed on his cushions and he finally had peace and quiet to find the damn Tylenol for the headache he'd developed.
But all in all, Brian's life has become increasingly breeder-like. He could be one of those straight bachelors everyone shakes their head at and says fondly, 'you'll never change,' to, and baby-sits his friends' kids when they go out for dinner, and ends up in his mid-thirties in a huge apartment surrounded by everything he could ever want, the only notable lack being that of some gorgeous blonde with long legs warming his bed every night. Only he's gay, and he'd much prefer the presence of a dick to long legs and a pussy anyway, and he's given up on finding anyone that doesn't remind him of Justin at the most inconvenient times, like when he's balls-deep inside their ass, or when he's waking up in the morning, or, if he's telling the truth, every fucking moment he's breathing. He thinks it's all kind of pathetic, but he's learned to accept the strange and bothersome fact that he'll never quite get over the little fucker, even though Justin's probably been over him for ages. But even that never-forget-him mentality fades with time.
--
The year Brian turns thirty-eight is a strange one. There are weeks of warm weather in February that make all the believers in the damn groundhog somewhere in Hicksville, Pennsylvania, nervous, and then the trees start flowering in March. And then there's a blizzard in April. Brian is snowed in for four days, and he spends them working on the computer and yelling at his employees on the phone. Remson needs that new layout by Friday, snowstorm or no snowstorm, he shouts into the phone. He hangs up and sits back in his chair and thinks that when he was twenty-two, fresh out of college and full of his own shit, he never would have thought he'd end up where he is now, on top of the business world and fucking content. He's never used that word to describe himself before.
The next day, Justin shows up on his doorstep, dripping melted snow onto Brian's fucking imported wood floor.
"Hey, Brian!" he says cheerfully, and moves around him, dropping his suitcases on the floor with a thud, and heads toward the refrigerator. "Jesus, there's nothing in here." He pulls out a water and drinks half of it in one go and leans against the counter. "So, what's up?"
Brian's severely tempted to laugh at the absurdity of the situation, and he does. Justin grins, and Brian feels absolutely ridiculous because for a second, it feels like all the other times they sat there, too fucking high on whatever to sleep, giggling about nothing and falling over each other laughing and not quite knowing where they were or how they got there.
He stalks up to Justin, and leaning close, Brian whispers into his ear, "You can sleep on the couch."
--
Brian becomes used to Justin's presence again much too easily. He thinks that he should be surprised seeing Justin's toothbrush in his bathroom, should be disconcerted when he hears the key turn in the door, and Justin comes in with a bag of groceries, because Brian never bothered to change the lock. But he's not, and some days, it feels like Justin never stopped living here, in his loft. The only difference is that when he wakes up, Justin's a bundle of blankets on his couch, instead of a familiar weight on the other side of the bed.
Something like a week after Justin shows up, Brian wakes to the smell of eggs frying. He has to clamp down on the memories of breakfast in bed, and dinner on the floor, and ice cream on the chaise. He hadn't realized he was so sentimental until Justin came back, and now every single fucking thing Justin does makes him remember a myriad of other things that he forgot about.
"I don't know if you're like, on a diet right now, but just saying, I used the yolk in these," Justin says between bites. Brian snorts and starts eating, even though he shouldn't because of the two pounds he gained while on a business trip in London. He glares at Justin, who's now crunching loudly into his toast with grape jelly, because Brian's eating is really all his fault. Fucking twink.
--
Brian doesn't know how everyone found out, because as far as he knows, Justin's just been lounging around the loft this entire time, making long distance phone calls to wherever and making small ventures out to get bananas and the white bread Brian won't touch, but he wakes up at seven in the morning because Debbie somehow sees it fitting to call at this ungodly hour when she finds out that Brian's been hiding her Sunshine in his loft for the past week.
"Hey, Deb," Justin says, after Brian throws the phone at him. "Yeah, I'm fine. No, I'm not jetlagged -- I came from New York, it's in the same time zone. No, I think I'm okay staying here for now." Brian glares at him while getting back into bed. Justin glances up at him and grins. "Yeah. I'll come visit today. I'm sorry, Deb, I was just trying to get back into the swing of things. You know, because Pittsburgh is so fast-paced compared to New York." He laughs. "Okay, I'll talk to you later. Bye."
"Are you ever gonna leave?" Brian asks him.
Justin smiles and says, "Nah, I think I'm okay here." Brian mumbles something to the effect of 'whatever,' and pulls the covers closer. Lindsay calls twenty minutes later, and Emmett after that, and Brian gives up on getting any more sleep that morning and plods into the bathroom for a long shower instead.
--
After the day of endless phone calls from more people than Justin has any right still knowing after years away from Pittsburgh, Justin convinces Brian to give him a ride to the diner. As soon as they step in, everyone gathers around them, Emmett sobbing and exclaiming about how good Justin looks (Brian doesn't think Justin looks any different really), Michael and Ben smiling in that freaky identical way that started after they spent a few years together, Gus asking loudly, "Who's Uncle Justin again? Was he the guy with the weird drawings?"
Brian slips away from the crowd surrounding the door, and goes to sit next to Lindsay, who is wisely waiting for everyone to sit back down before greeting Justin herself.
"How're you holding up?" Lindsay asks.
"What're you talking about?" Brian asks casually.
"You know." Brian gives her a look. "Well, with Justin -- "
"Yeah, okay," Brian says. "I know -- " He glances up when Debbie comes in from the back, squeals at Justin's arrival and goes over to lovingly suffocate him. "I don't give a shit that he's back," he says. "I don't care that you all are fucking high over this, I don't even care that he's eating and sleeping and shitting in my house." He pauses. "I'm fine. I'll be better when he's not living with me, but I'm fine." Brian knows that he just contradicted himself, but Lindsay knows him too well to listen to his bullshit anyway, and his only hope is that she won't give him knowing looks for however long Justin's in town, plus a couple months after he leaves. True to form, she's looking at him with that watery eyed, tragic look that he associates with the endings of trite romance novels. He looks away. Justin is laughing with Hunter, who's back from college for the weekend.
Gus breaks away from Mel, who's still talking to Justin, and clambers onto Brian's lap. "You're getting heavy, sonny boy," Brian says, and he feels Justin's eyes on him. He doesn't look up.
--
"Are you mad at me?" Justin asks, cutting through the silence blanketing the loft a few mornings later.
"No," Brian says.
"You haven't talked to me in sentences with more than four words in two days," Justin points out. "Look, if you want me to leave, I can go."
Brian is tempted to say yes, he wants Justin to go, because having Justin back is too familiar for comfort, having Justin back makes him think about blowjobs in the shower and off-key singing in falsetto and movie nights ending halfway through because of impromptu make-out sessions. Brian wants to say something about how he would find Justin's hair on his pillows for months after he left, and he never could bring himself to wash the damn pillowcases. "No, it's okay," he says instead.
"Are you sure you want me here? Because I only came to visit that night, I didn't think you'd actually invite me to stay…" Justin trails off.
"Yeah," Brian says, and returns to buttoning his shirt. Leo Brown's top representative is coming into the office today.
"Brian," Justin says. Brian looks up. "I know we never really talked about that last time we broke up," Justin begins awkwardly, "but can't we be friends, or at least, you know, talk to each other sometimes?" He grins as if he's being particularly clever, and it makes Brian want to say fuck the meeting with the rep and get incredibly drunk instead.
Instead he pastes a smile on his face, and says, "I can do friends," before ruffling Justin's hair, joking, "I'll be home for dinner, dear," and leaving. He's vaguely relieved that Justin couldn't start talking about what happened, because it's obvious that Justin's been over him for years, and Brian has been too, really.
--
Around the fourth 'Welcome back, Justin' party that Brian is forced to attend, he stops wishing Justin would leave. When he pauses to think about it, he supposes that maybe somewhere along the way, while pretending to be Justin's friend, he stopped and actually became his friend.
The evenings they're not at Debbie's or Michael's, Brian comes home to find that Justin's ordered pizza or Chinese, or made food that Brian doesn't want to ask the calorie count of, and he hasn't stepped on a scale in a week, because then all their nights of watching old movies on Brian's battered VCR from storage while eating inordinate amounts of popcorn would end. Inevitably the thought occurs that maybe, even while they were together, back when they would fall asleep entangled and wake up in the same way and fuck around in the shower at eight in the morning as a part of their daily routine, they weren't this close. No, Brian corrects himself. This is just a different kind of intimacy, and it only feels different because he's never had it with Justin.
Brian tunes back into a story that he's heard related at least two times before. "… And then he said, 'Fuck this, I'd rather take dick up the ass for the rest of my life,' and I told him that he'd never be that lucky," Justin says. Everyone at the table laughs. Debbie is wiping tears from her eyes. Brian thinks that it's not all that funny, but there's no accounting for some people's taste. Justin catches his eye and grins at him. He can't help but smile back.
After dinner, Brian feels absurdly full, and he and Justin sit next to each other on the couch, Michael on Brian's other side, and Ben on Michael's other side. Ben is relating the story of his latest conference with his publisher on his new book. Brian only read approximately two paragraphs of the draft, put it down and promptly forgot all about it. Absently, he begins to ruffle Justin's hair. Justin looks at him for a moment and then continues talking to Ben again.
"Brian," Michael says quietly. Brian looks up. "Can I talk to you?"
Outside, Michael asks bluntly, "Are you in love with him?"
Brian laughs and throws an arm around Michael, huddles close and says, "What do you think, Mikey?"
Michael shrugs him off. "I think you fucking adore him, Brian. You know what you were doing in there? You were playing with his hair." Michael pauses for effect. "And you've been flirting, and joking, and doing everything except having sex with him on the table."
Brian stares and finally says, "No, just friends."
Michael looks relieved and suspicious at the same time. "Okay." Brian feels a sudden craving for a cigarette, because his chest has started to feel too tight, and not for the first time, he regrets promising Gus he would try to quit at Christmas. They go back into the house, and Brian stands instead of sitting down next to Justin again. Justin doesn't seem to notice, and talks to Gus about baseball, fumbling his way through homeruns and batting averages.
--
Fucking Michael, Brian thinks, as he cradles a bowl of popcorn. He's at the loft, watching some movie that Justin picked out. Justin sprawls on the floor at his feet, half watching the main character run through some alley, half sketching two pairs of hands idly. Brian closes his eyes to the familiar sight of Justin dropping his pencil and stretching his hand slowly, but takes his hand and begins massaging it.
"Thanks," Justin sighs and crawls onto the couch and leans on Brian's shoulder tiredly. At some point, they fall asleep on each other, and when Brian wakes, his head propped on Justin's shoulder uncomfortably, it's almost midnight.
Justin, almost buried under the bundle of blankets he's appropriated from Brian's closet, says quietly, "Hey. You missed dinner."
Brian says, "It was probably too high in saturated fat anyway."
Justin laughs. "Yeah."
Brian throws his clothes on the floor on the way to his bed, and under the covers, he hears Justin's voice, "Good night." Unwillingly, he stares at the ceiling and remembers how Justin would murmur those words in the same way as he went to sleep curled up by Brian's side. He closes his eyes.
"Good night."
--
Brian hasn't been in Babylon itself for almost a year, only stepping foot in the office once a week, despite the fact that he owns it. He tries not to think about how old he is in comparison to everyone else here, and takes comfort in knowing that Michael and Ben, both older than he is, are here as well, looking like they've never set foot in the place before. But then, they didn't have any reason to after a while, secure in themselves and in each other. Justin is bouncing on his heels.
"Do you guys wanna dance?" he yells through the music.
Michael says that they'll be at the bar, and that Justin should go ahead. Brian doesn't feel like being made fun of by every fag with a two-inch dick and a thirty-two inch waist in the place, so he nods his agreement. Justin shrugs and says he'll see them later.
They lean on the bar and express aesthetic appreciation for the lights and the music and the bodies. Michael and Ben start making out like horny teenagers, and Brian feels like leaving them, only he knows Michael will yell at him later.
Brian sees Justin dancing by himself, body pulsing to the beat. Some tall shirtless guy starts dancing with him, and Justin's arms wrap around his neck.
Brian has never let himself really wonder what could have happened years ago if they'd somehow made up, but he suddenly thinks that he should be the one dancing with Justin, not giving a fuck about what a couple cunty fags would say tomorrow about old Kinney. And his thoughts are suddenly rushing in a direction he never let himself go before. He never really forgot Justin, did he, just put him in the back of his mind, because there was no way that Justin was coming back after so long, and then he did come back. And there was no way that Brian could still have any feelings for him after so long, but then he did have feelings for him. And there is no way that Justin still loves him, even though Justin used to say the words all the time, and Brian still remembers the strange leaping feeling in his chest whenever Justin said it back then. Back then, Brian thinks, and he knows that he's having all these thoughts five years too late.
He's a fucking idiot.
--
He tells him. Of course he does, he's a fucking idiot like that, which is a thought he's having too much lately for comfort. He's fucking stupid, just like he's always been about Justin, and he'll admit it now, even though he never would before.
Justin stares, and gapes a little, and opens and closes his mouth like a fish. In fact, he looks a little like the guppy that Mel and Lindsay got Gus as a training pet for the puppy he's still working towards. Brian finds this a little funny somehow, and tries not to start laughing hysterically, because he already knows what Justin will say, and laughing would make it worse somehow.
"We can't do this," Justin blurts out finally. He doesn't wait for a response. "You know we'll fuck it up, we always do." He looks up at Brian, all big blue eyes and long lashes and at that moment, he looks seventeen again, and Brian's a twenty-nine year old that's about to get fucked over by this little blond Boy Wonder. "I mean, we're friends now, and we shouldn't do anything to mess it up…"
Brian nods and Justin says something about how maybe he should get his own place, maybe that's what started this entire thing. Brian tells him not to, that they'll be fine. Justin looks relieved. He goes on, but Brian doesn't listen too well after that.
He'll win Justin back. Brian Kinney has never failed to get anything he ever really wanted, and he's never wanted anything more in his entire life. He'll make Justin fall in love with him again.
End.
Title: At Times, Indeed, Almost Ridiculous
Rating: PG-13
Summary: "Sometimes people say that the end is inevitable."
Author's Notes: So many thanks to bea_nonymous, for betaing at the very last minute, and for being generally fabulous and supportive. I wub you. >:D< The title comes from the poem "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," by T.S. Eliot.
Warnings: This story takes the S5 plot after 507 and runs far, far away with it. Or spoilers through 507.
Sometimes people say that the end is inevitable. Brian has ended his relationship with Justin more times than he cares to think about. When he was feeling particularly sarcastic about it, he used to say that they broke up about every year. Only the last time they broke up, Justin hugged him and walked out and sent a moving truck for his things a week later and Brian thought he'd be back, because he always was, but weeks turned into months into years.
Brian hears about him sometimes, but not really, because he tunes out whenever Debbie talks about how successful her Sunshine is, or when Michael mentions the fact that Justin just emailed him last night, or when Lindsay says she just got an invitation to his next art show. There's no point in thinking about why. When Michael and Ben and Lindsay are absent during the same week that Justin's art is premiering in New York, he sits at the diner with Ted and Emmett and Melanie and pointedly avoids talking about anyone's absence.
He does think it's kind of hilarious in a fucking stupid way how boring his life is without Justin, though. He goes to work, and Woody's, and Babylon once in a while, but more often, he goes to Little League games, or has dinner with the munchers or Ben and Michael, and once, horror of horrors, he even had Gus and two of his six year old friends over. One of them got into his porn collection, and the other one threw up green chunks all over his couch, and he ended up bribing the lot of them with rocky road ice cream he didn't know he had before remembering that rocky road was Justin's second favorite ice cream flavor. The ice cream, he discovered, had a sort of inverse effect to what he wanted, but after three hours of them all running around screaming their heads off, they collapsed on his cushions and he finally had peace and quiet to find the damn Tylenol for the headache he'd developed.
But all in all, Brian's life has become increasingly breeder-like. He could be one of those straight bachelors everyone shakes their head at and says fondly, 'you'll never change,' to, and baby-sits his friends' kids when they go out for dinner, and ends up in his mid-thirties in a huge apartment surrounded by everything he could ever want, the only notable lack being that of some gorgeous blonde with long legs warming his bed every night. Only he's gay, and he'd much prefer the presence of a dick to long legs and a pussy anyway, and he's given up on finding anyone that doesn't remind him of Justin at the most inconvenient times, like when he's balls-deep inside their ass, or when he's waking up in the morning, or, if he's telling the truth, every fucking moment he's breathing. He thinks it's all kind of pathetic, but he's learned to accept the strange and bothersome fact that he'll never quite get over the little fucker, even though Justin's probably been over him for ages. But even that never-forget-him mentality fades with time.
--
The year Brian turns thirty-eight is a strange one. There are weeks of warm weather in February that make all the believers in the damn groundhog somewhere in Hicksville, Pennsylvania, nervous, and then the trees start flowering in March. And then there's a blizzard in April. Brian is snowed in for four days, and he spends them working on the computer and yelling at his employees on the phone. Remson needs that new layout by Friday, snowstorm or no snowstorm, he shouts into the phone. He hangs up and sits back in his chair and thinks that when he was twenty-two, fresh out of college and full of his own shit, he never would have thought he'd end up where he is now, on top of the business world and fucking content. He's never used that word to describe himself before.
The next day, Justin shows up on his doorstep, dripping melted snow onto Brian's fucking imported wood floor.
"Hey, Brian!" he says cheerfully, and moves around him, dropping his suitcases on the floor with a thud, and heads toward the refrigerator. "Jesus, there's nothing in here." He pulls out a water and drinks half of it in one go and leans against the counter. "So, what's up?"
Brian's severely tempted to laugh at the absurdity of the situation, and he does. Justin grins, and Brian feels absolutely ridiculous because for a second, it feels like all the other times they sat there, too fucking high on whatever to sleep, giggling about nothing and falling over each other laughing and not quite knowing where they were or how they got there.
He stalks up to Justin, and leaning close, Brian whispers into his ear, "You can sleep on the couch."
--
Brian becomes used to Justin's presence again much too easily. He thinks that he should be surprised seeing Justin's toothbrush in his bathroom, should be disconcerted when he hears the key turn in the door, and Justin comes in with a bag of groceries, because Brian never bothered to change the lock. But he's not, and some days, it feels like Justin never stopped living here, in his loft. The only difference is that when he wakes up, Justin's a bundle of blankets on his couch, instead of a familiar weight on the other side of the bed.
Something like a week after Justin shows up, Brian wakes to the smell of eggs frying. He has to clamp down on the memories of breakfast in bed, and dinner on the floor, and ice cream on the chaise. He hadn't realized he was so sentimental until Justin came back, and now every single fucking thing Justin does makes him remember a myriad of other things that he forgot about.
"I don't know if you're like, on a diet right now, but just saying, I used the yolk in these," Justin says between bites. Brian snorts and starts eating, even though he shouldn't because of the two pounds he gained while on a business trip in London. He glares at Justin, who's now crunching loudly into his toast with grape jelly, because Brian's eating is really all his fault. Fucking twink.
--
Brian doesn't know how everyone found out, because as far as he knows, Justin's just been lounging around the loft this entire time, making long distance phone calls to wherever and making small ventures out to get bananas and the white bread Brian won't touch, but he wakes up at seven in the morning because Debbie somehow sees it fitting to call at this ungodly hour when she finds out that Brian's been hiding her Sunshine in his loft for the past week.
"Hey, Deb," Justin says, after Brian throws the phone at him. "Yeah, I'm fine. No, I'm not jetlagged -- I came from New York, it's in the same time zone. No, I think I'm okay staying here for now." Brian glares at him while getting back into bed. Justin glances up at him and grins. "Yeah. I'll come visit today. I'm sorry, Deb, I was just trying to get back into the swing of things. You know, because Pittsburgh is so fast-paced compared to New York." He laughs. "Okay, I'll talk to you later. Bye."
"Are you ever gonna leave?" Brian asks him.
Justin smiles and says, "Nah, I think I'm okay here." Brian mumbles something to the effect of 'whatever,' and pulls the covers closer. Lindsay calls twenty minutes later, and Emmett after that, and Brian gives up on getting any more sleep that morning and plods into the bathroom for a long shower instead.
--
After the day of endless phone calls from more people than Justin has any right still knowing after years away from Pittsburgh, Justin convinces Brian to give him a ride to the diner. As soon as they step in, everyone gathers around them, Emmett sobbing and exclaiming about how good Justin looks (Brian doesn't think Justin looks any different really), Michael and Ben smiling in that freaky identical way that started after they spent a few years together, Gus asking loudly, "Who's Uncle Justin again? Was he the guy with the weird drawings?"
Brian slips away from the crowd surrounding the door, and goes to sit next to Lindsay, who is wisely waiting for everyone to sit back down before greeting Justin herself.
"How're you holding up?" Lindsay asks.
"What're you talking about?" Brian asks casually.
"You know." Brian gives her a look. "Well, with Justin -- "
"Yeah, okay," Brian says. "I know -- " He glances up when Debbie comes in from the back, squeals at Justin's arrival and goes over to lovingly suffocate him. "I don't give a shit that he's back," he says. "I don't care that you all are fucking high over this, I don't even care that he's eating and sleeping and shitting in my house." He pauses. "I'm fine. I'll be better when he's not living with me, but I'm fine." Brian knows that he just contradicted himself, but Lindsay knows him too well to listen to his bullshit anyway, and his only hope is that she won't give him knowing looks for however long Justin's in town, plus a couple months after he leaves. True to form, she's looking at him with that watery eyed, tragic look that he associates with the endings of trite romance novels. He looks away. Justin is laughing with Hunter, who's back from college for the weekend.
Gus breaks away from Mel, who's still talking to Justin, and clambers onto Brian's lap. "You're getting heavy, sonny boy," Brian says, and he feels Justin's eyes on him. He doesn't look up.
--
"Are you mad at me?" Justin asks, cutting through the silence blanketing the loft a few mornings later.
"No," Brian says.
"You haven't talked to me in sentences with more than four words in two days," Justin points out. "Look, if you want me to leave, I can go."
Brian is tempted to say yes, he wants Justin to go, because having Justin back is too familiar for comfort, having Justin back makes him think about blowjobs in the shower and off-key singing in falsetto and movie nights ending halfway through because of impromptu make-out sessions. Brian wants to say something about how he would find Justin's hair on his pillows for months after he left, and he never could bring himself to wash the damn pillowcases. "No, it's okay," he says instead.
"Are you sure you want me here? Because I only came to visit that night, I didn't think you'd actually invite me to stay…" Justin trails off.
"Yeah," Brian says, and returns to buttoning his shirt. Leo Brown's top representative is coming into the office today.
"Brian," Justin says. Brian looks up. "I know we never really talked about that last time we broke up," Justin begins awkwardly, "but can't we be friends, or at least, you know, talk to each other sometimes?" He grins as if he's being particularly clever, and it makes Brian want to say fuck the meeting with the rep and get incredibly drunk instead.
Instead he pastes a smile on his face, and says, "I can do friends," before ruffling Justin's hair, joking, "I'll be home for dinner, dear," and leaving. He's vaguely relieved that Justin couldn't start talking about what happened, because it's obvious that Justin's been over him for years, and Brian has been too, really.
--
Around the fourth 'Welcome back, Justin' party that Brian is forced to attend, he stops wishing Justin would leave. When he pauses to think about it, he supposes that maybe somewhere along the way, while pretending to be Justin's friend, he stopped and actually became his friend.
The evenings they're not at Debbie's or Michael's, Brian comes home to find that Justin's ordered pizza or Chinese, or made food that Brian doesn't want to ask the calorie count of, and he hasn't stepped on a scale in a week, because then all their nights of watching old movies on Brian's battered VCR from storage while eating inordinate amounts of popcorn would end. Inevitably the thought occurs that maybe, even while they were together, back when they would fall asleep entangled and wake up in the same way and fuck around in the shower at eight in the morning as a part of their daily routine, they weren't this close. No, Brian corrects himself. This is just a different kind of intimacy, and it only feels different because he's never had it with Justin.
Brian tunes back into a story that he's heard related at least two times before. "… And then he said, 'Fuck this, I'd rather take dick up the ass for the rest of my life,' and I told him that he'd never be that lucky," Justin says. Everyone at the table laughs. Debbie is wiping tears from her eyes. Brian thinks that it's not all that funny, but there's no accounting for some people's taste. Justin catches his eye and grins at him. He can't help but smile back.
After dinner, Brian feels absurdly full, and he and Justin sit next to each other on the couch, Michael on Brian's other side, and Ben on Michael's other side. Ben is relating the story of his latest conference with his publisher on his new book. Brian only read approximately two paragraphs of the draft, put it down and promptly forgot all about it. Absently, he begins to ruffle Justin's hair. Justin looks at him for a moment and then continues talking to Ben again.
"Brian," Michael says quietly. Brian looks up. "Can I talk to you?"
Outside, Michael asks bluntly, "Are you in love with him?"
Brian laughs and throws an arm around Michael, huddles close and says, "What do you think, Mikey?"
Michael shrugs him off. "I think you fucking adore him, Brian. You know what you were doing in there? You were playing with his hair." Michael pauses for effect. "And you've been flirting, and joking, and doing everything except having sex with him on the table."
Brian stares and finally says, "No, just friends."
Michael looks relieved and suspicious at the same time. "Okay." Brian feels a sudden craving for a cigarette, because his chest has started to feel too tight, and not for the first time, he regrets promising Gus he would try to quit at Christmas. They go back into the house, and Brian stands instead of sitting down next to Justin again. Justin doesn't seem to notice, and talks to Gus about baseball, fumbling his way through homeruns and batting averages.
--
Fucking Michael, Brian thinks, as he cradles a bowl of popcorn. He's at the loft, watching some movie that Justin picked out. Justin sprawls on the floor at his feet, half watching the main character run through some alley, half sketching two pairs of hands idly. Brian closes his eyes to the familiar sight of Justin dropping his pencil and stretching his hand slowly, but takes his hand and begins massaging it.
"Thanks," Justin sighs and crawls onto the couch and leans on Brian's shoulder tiredly. At some point, they fall asleep on each other, and when Brian wakes, his head propped on Justin's shoulder uncomfortably, it's almost midnight.
Justin, almost buried under the bundle of blankets he's appropriated from Brian's closet, says quietly, "Hey. You missed dinner."
Brian says, "It was probably too high in saturated fat anyway."
Justin laughs. "Yeah."
Brian throws his clothes on the floor on the way to his bed, and under the covers, he hears Justin's voice, "Good night." Unwillingly, he stares at the ceiling and remembers how Justin would murmur those words in the same way as he went to sleep curled up by Brian's side. He closes his eyes.
"Good night."
--
Brian hasn't been in Babylon itself for almost a year, only stepping foot in the office once a week, despite the fact that he owns it. He tries not to think about how old he is in comparison to everyone else here, and takes comfort in knowing that Michael and Ben, both older than he is, are here as well, looking like they've never set foot in the place before. But then, they didn't have any reason to after a while, secure in themselves and in each other. Justin is bouncing on his heels.
"Do you guys wanna dance?" he yells through the music.
Michael says that they'll be at the bar, and that Justin should go ahead. Brian doesn't feel like being made fun of by every fag with a two-inch dick and a thirty-two inch waist in the place, so he nods his agreement. Justin shrugs and says he'll see them later.
They lean on the bar and express aesthetic appreciation for the lights and the music and the bodies. Michael and Ben start making out like horny teenagers, and Brian feels like leaving them, only he knows Michael will yell at him later.
Brian sees Justin dancing by himself, body pulsing to the beat. Some tall shirtless guy starts dancing with him, and Justin's arms wrap around his neck.
Brian has never let himself really wonder what could have happened years ago if they'd somehow made up, but he suddenly thinks that he should be the one dancing with Justin, not giving a fuck about what a couple cunty fags would say tomorrow about old Kinney. And his thoughts are suddenly rushing in a direction he never let himself go before. He never really forgot Justin, did he, just put him in the back of his mind, because there was no way that Justin was coming back after so long, and then he did come back. And there was no way that Brian could still have any feelings for him after so long, but then he did have feelings for him. And there is no way that Justin still loves him, even though Justin used to say the words all the time, and Brian still remembers the strange leaping feeling in his chest whenever Justin said it back then. Back then, Brian thinks, and he knows that he's having all these thoughts five years too late.
He's a fucking idiot.
--
He tells him. Of course he does, he's a fucking idiot like that, which is a thought he's having too much lately for comfort. He's fucking stupid, just like he's always been about Justin, and he'll admit it now, even though he never would before.
Justin stares, and gapes a little, and opens and closes his mouth like a fish. In fact, he looks a little like the guppy that Mel and Lindsay got Gus as a training pet for the puppy he's still working towards. Brian finds this a little funny somehow, and tries not to start laughing hysterically, because he already knows what Justin will say, and laughing would make it worse somehow.
"We can't do this," Justin blurts out finally. He doesn't wait for a response. "You know we'll fuck it up, we always do." He looks up at Brian, all big blue eyes and long lashes and at that moment, he looks seventeen again, and Brian's a twenty-nine year old that's about to get fucked over by this little blond Boy Wonder. "I mean, we're friends now, and we shouldn't do anything to mess it up…"
Brian nods and Justin says something about how maybe he should get his own place, maybe that's what started this entire thing. Brian tells him not to, that they'll be fine. Justin looks relieved. He goes on, but Brian doesn't listen too well after that.
He'll win Justin back. Brian Kinney has never failed to get anything he ever really wanted, and he's never wanted anything more in his entire life. He'll make Justin fall in love with him again.
End.