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And indeed there will be time…
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions.
— T.S. Eliot
“The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”
“You’re being a fucking miserable bastard.”
“Why thank you, Cynthia,” says Brian sweetly. “That’s the nicest thing anyone’s said to me all day. Now get the fuck out of my office.”
Cynthia narrows her eyes at him shrewdly. Her talons match the soles of her Louboutins today, and the only reason why Brian doesn’t flinch when she leans over his desk to shove one into his chest is because his one remaining ball is made of titanium.
“Listen to me,” she says. “I’ll be happy to make the call. You know, if you’re too chickenshit to do it yourself.”
“It’s so funny to me how you think that this is any of your business.”
Cynthia smiles, saccharine. “It is my business when you’ve fired six interns in two hours and thrown a latte all over the art department’s final draft of the Brown mock-ups. Have you ever known me to enjoy cleaning up the tears of college freshmen in the bathroom, Brian? They cornered me. I have mascara on my new blouse.”
Brian leans back in his chair, mostly to avoid being impaled on Cynthia’s manicure. “The tears of our peasants look good on you, but I still fail to understand how this pertains to me calling anyone.”
“Don’t play dumb,” Cynthia snarls. “Faux stupidity adds ten years, Mr. Kinney. Now go take a lunch break while I mop up your mess. Literally.”
“Get out,” Brian advises loudly, but Cynthia has already slammed the glass door behind her.
--
Brian fucking hates Christmas this year. He can usually spare it a modicum of appreciation for the fact that its gross consumerist cheer makes Kinnetik a fucking bundle and gives him about half a day of free time before he has to work on launching the New Years campaigns, but even that isn’t doing it for him right now. It’s just too fucking cold. Definitely too cold to loiter outside of the diner and have a smoke in peace, but it’s not like he’s going to smoke in his Vette.
“Brian?” a voice calls.
Brian turns around.
“Theodore,” he greets. “I’d smile, but the Botox has frozen my face this way. And you brought Blake. What a pleasant and unexpected surprise. Why the fuck aren’t you at the office?”
“It’s called a lunch break, Bri,” Ted says, swinging an easy arm up around Blake’s shoulder. “You should come inside,” he advises, in a lower voice. “Debbie’ll have your balls."
“She’s not the only one who wants them,” says Brian. He hears the bell ding above the door when Ted and Blake push through it. Brian can hear Kiki’s yell all the way from where he’s standing on the street; he turns to look at what all the commotion is. Blake and Ted are standing in the doorway still. They look up above them, confused for a second. Then they laugh. Then they kiss.
“I hope it falls in your mouth and you fucking die of mistletoe poisoning,” Brian mutters. He stomps out his cigarette in the snow and follows them inside, where everything is red and green and fluorescent. Brian blinks at the honest-to-God plastic rainbow Christmas tree propped up on the counter and promptly turns around again, reaching for the door.
“Hold it,” yells Deb.
Brian clenches the door handle until his knuckles are white. Then he spins around, fixing a smile on his face. “Mrs. Novotny-Horvath,” he greets, “how is the littlest lady on all of Liberty?”
“I could ask you the same, you little shit,” says Debbie, rounding the counter, pointing—of course—the second red nail of the day into Brian’s face. “I haven’t seen hide nor hair of you since practically Thanksgiving. You had me worried sick. Are you eating enough?”
Brian rolls his eyes hugely and pushes past her, joining Ted and Emmett and Blake at their booth. Debbie isn’t deterred.
“You look like hell,” she says, fishing in her apron for her notepad. “Hasn’t Sunshine called you? When was the last time you talked to Gus?”
“Thanks,” Brian snaps. “I’ll have a coffee to go with a side of, oh, none of your business.”
“He hasn’t called,” Emmett stage whispers.
“On second thought,” says Brian, moving to stand, “I’ll eat at Starbucks.”
“The hell you will,” Debbie hisses, and shoves Brian back down. “I’ll get some food in you yet.”
As she bustles off to put in something that is likely carb-laden and bound to give Brian a spontaneous heart attack—which might actually improve his day at this point—Emmett turns to look at Brian.
“Do you even drink anything other than coffee?” he asks, with the intensely fake curiosity that means he’s bored of watching Ted and Blake make eyes.
“No,” Ted replies for Brian. “Don’t you know? All his favorite things end with I-N-E. Caffeine, nicotine, codeine…”
“Ketamine,” Emmett helpfully supplies.
“Cocaine.”
Emmett shakes his head. “No, it has to rhyme.”
“Moonshine?” tries Blake.
Ted raises an eyebrow. “Sunshi—“
“Wow, would you look at the time,” interrupts Brian. “It’s shut-the-fuck-up o’clock.”
All heads at the table swivel to look at him. Nobody, no one, breathes a single word.
Brian raises a very slow eyebrow. “Unless you’re gearing up for an orgy, girls...”
“You really do look like shit, Bri,” says Ted, suddenly sympathetic. Brian thinks viciously that sympathy is pretty rich coming from a former meth head.
“You really, really do,” Emmett agrees, resting his chin on his hand.
Blake leans forward, eyebrows furrowed in concern. “There’s nothing...wrong, is there? I mean, you’re not…”
Brian regrets the day he ever told anyone at all about the cancer. He should have just died a peaceful death when he had the chance. “I’ve been pulling long hours,” he says. “Haven’t been getting a lot of sleep. Staying late at the office, unlike some people.”
Ted narrows his eyes. They both know damn well that he works the same hours as Brian.
“Then you should sleep more, fuck less, and call a certain someone,” Debbie advises, plunking a cup of coffee in front of Brian. It splashes out a little and spills onto his coat sleeve. He frowns heavily. Before he can bitch at her about the dry cleaning bill, she’s already moved back to the kitchen again.
“You know,” says Emmett, conspiratorial, “They say that if you can’t sleep, it means your soulmate is thinking of you.”
Brian chugs half of his coffee without putting in any sugar, burns the shit out of his tongue, and decides not to dignify that one with a response.
Apparently having done their allotted time each in their enactment of the Kinney Inquisition, Ted and Emmett and the beau shift the conversation elsewhere. Brian pulls out his phone while they talk and, bored to fucking tears, shoots a text off to Lindsay: Fucking Jesus Christ.
“So I said, what the bride wants, the bride gets. Even if it is zombies on the wedding cake,” Emmett is saying. Ted almost snorts hash browns out of his nose.
“Are you sure she isn’t a dyke?” Brian asks, not knowing or actually caring what the conversation is about.
I certainly hope not, Lindsay texts back. There’s an attachment to the text, and Brian clicks on it. A small picture pops up: a bright crayon stick-figure drawing of Mel, Linds, Jenny Rebecca, and Brian. BY GUS PETERSON MARCUS is written in big red letters in the lower right hand corner. The piece is titled, in the same crayon, A FAMILY! It was Justin who taught Gus about signing his artwork, Brian remembers.
“Bye,” says Brian, interrupting the table conversation. The boys look up at him, and Ted seems really concerned, almost like he’s about to ask what the fuck is going on, but Brian is already standing up.
“Work,” he hears Ted explain to the guys, and Brian immediately feels bad about his earlier inner Theodore-directed tirade. Ted knows it isn’t work. But Brian doesn’t look back as he hits the call button and presses his phone to his ear, pushing outside of the diner and starting his way back to the car.
“He’s quite the little artist, isn’t he?” Lindsay asks in hello. “He wanted to fit Justin on there, but then Mel asked, what about Uncle Michael and Grandma Deb? And Auntie Em, and Uncle Teddy…”
“Christ,” Brian huffs, laughing a little. “Fucking Mel.”
“Maybe later.”
Brian gives an exaggerated shudder and then remembers that Linds can’t see him. Whatever; it’s been a long day.
“Is Gus at school?” Brian asks into the silence.
“He’s out in an hour or so. Do you want me to call you after Mel picks him up so you two can talk?”
“Nah. I’ll be back at work.” What a lame ass fucking excuse, Kinney, Brian thinks.
“Brian,” says Lindsay. Her voice is suddenly much more serious, and it sounds like she’s moved away from whatever lunch crowd she had been standing in before. “Are you okay?”
“Why does everyone keep fucking asking me that?” Brian snaps. “I’m fine, Jesus.”
“You don’t sound fine.”
Brian fishes for his keys in his coat pocket and, upon finding them, jams them into the lock. He forgot to put his gloves back on when he left the diner and his fingers are now a bright and frozen cherry red. “Well, not to worry; I’m absolutely fabulous, as usual.”
“Brian,” Lindsay starts.
“When are you bringing my kid down for Christmas?” Brian interrupts.
“The twenty-third,” Linds says. “But it’s a late flight, so we’ll see you first thing on Christmas Eve morning.”
Brian turns the key in the ignition and cranks up the heat, sandwiching the phone between shoulder and ear so he can stick his hands in front of the heaters. “Where are you staying?”
“Debbie offered, of course, but we’ll probably just get a hotel room.”
“Have you already made the reservations?”
“Brian—”
“Let me,” Brian says, picking the phone back up and scrubbing his other hand over his face. “Just let me, Linds.”
“You don’t have to pay our way to be a good father,” she says quietly. “You already are a good father.”
Brian doesn’t really know what to say to that. He considers hanging up, cashing the day in for broke, and going home to get absolutely fucking shitfaced. But then Lindsay speaks over his silence.
“Just nowhere too fancy,” she warns.
“Hah,” says Brian, and hangs up. He’ll be damned if his kid isn’t staying at the nicest fucking Marriott in town.
—
When Brian gets back to the office, Cynthia seems to have settled down.
“You seem to have settled down,” he says dryly as he passes her desk.
“Yeah, I drank the blood of some virgins earlier, so I’m feeling a lot better,” she replies. A passing employee’s head snaps up in sheer terror.
His office is thankfully, blessedly, totally empty. He doesn’t have any pressing meetings for the rest of the day, so he takes twenty minutes and books the presidential suite in the Marriott on sixth through the day after New Years, figuring that since he’s the one paying for it, Mel won’t even think of bitching about how long of a stay that is. He also books the flight, round trip and First Class, and forwards all the information to Lindsay’s email.
BRIAN, she emails back, ten minutes later. Brian smiles and doesn’t bother replying.
Then his intercom buzzes, and his momentary good mood is shot straight to hell. “Someone here from a Novotny Inc.,” Cynthia says, voice dripping with faux professionalism. Brian immediately hates her again. “Should I send him in, Mr. Kinney?”
“Fuck,” mutters Brian, just as Michael strolls in, a huge grin on his puppy dog face.
“Cynthia called me to tell me to call Justin to tell him to call you, but then I thought I’d just cut out the middle man and come see you myself,” he says.
“That,” replies Brian, “doesn’t even make any fucking sense.”
Michael shrugs. “Probably not. I bought some weed, though. Ben’s teaching night courses, let’s go over to your place.”
Brian pauses for a second, indecisive. “Your drugs are always weak as hell,” he finally decides. “We’re smoking my weed.”
—
If there is one thing Brian Kinney knows about himself, it’s that Cynthia was right: he is a fucking miserable bastard. This is not news. This is not some sort of national fucking secret, nor is it the hidden meaning in The Last Supper. The sky is blue, jizz is white, and Brian Kinney is a grade A asshole.
“Addendum,” declares Michael, “Brian Kinney is a grade A asshole when Justin isn’t around.”
Brian thinks he’s going to tear his own hair out. “If we could not,” he snaps.
“Why can’t you just call him?” Michael asks. He passes the joint to Brian, coughing a little. “Hi Justin,” he says, dropping his voice low. “I miss your sweet tight ass. Come home for the holidays so I can dress you up like a ho-ho-ho and fuck you until you call me Santa. Bye Justin.”
“It’s not like that,” Brian tries.
Michael snorts. “It’s exactly like that.”
Brian takes a drag and holds onto it for a second, feeling like he needs to be a lot more stoned in order to say what he’s going to say next. “We don’t just fuck, you know.”
“Oh my God,” Michael says faintly. He grabs at his chest. “Oh my God, get me a fucking tape recorder.”
Brian scowls. “We don’t.”
Michael’s eyes go soft. Christ. This, Brian remembers, is why he stopped getting high with Michael on a regular basis. They’re having a perfectly nice time, and then he has to go and get sentimental. “I know you don’t,” he says, softly. “Brian, look at me. I know you don’t. And I know that you miss him. But you’re doing pretty good, you know? I mean, it’s been a whole month and a half since the last time you tried to beat down my door at three AM because you were drunk and angry, which was starting to become a pretty reliable occurrence—”
Brian huffs a laugh.
“...And you really are learning how to be on your own again, for the time being, until Justin gets back.” Michael reaches up and pets a slow hand through Brian’s hair. “I know that you miss him,” he repeats. “And I know you think it’s easier to pretend like he’s going to be gone forever, because it hurts less. But trust me, it isn’t. It isn’t easier that way. It’s easier to just pick up a phone and dial.”
“I kept the house,” Brian admits.
Michael’s hand drops to Brian’s shoulder. His eyebrows furrow so deeply and so fast it’s funny. “What?”
Brian takes his time rolling up another joint, lighting it, and taking the biggest hit humanly possible. “I told him I loved him but he wouldn’t take me back still. I asked him to marry me and he said no. So I bought him this fucking mansion thirty minutes out of the city, with stables and a fucking swimming pool and…everything. Tennis court, too. Kid doesn’t even play tennis, and he hates horses. But I bought it for him. He told me to flip it when he left, but I didn’t do it.”
Michael looks like he’s having some trouble processing all this new information at once.
“Yeah,” says Brian, sympathetic. “Me too.”
“Holy fucking shit,” Michael blurts belatedly. “Does he know?”
“That I didn’t flip the manor, or that I,” Brian pronounces carefully, “am a fucking idiot?”
“Does he know how much you love him?”
Brian passes the joint to Michael, who just holds it dumbly in his hands. Brian helpfully puts his hand over Michael’s and lifts the joint to his mouth. “I know you don’t hear this a lot, but you need to suck,” Brian instructs.
“Brian,” Michael says.
“Mikey,” Brian replies.
But Michael is just staring at him with huge wet eyes, and he’s obviously not about to let this one go.
“He knows,” says Brian. “Actually, he knew back when I still thought it was indigestion I was feeling every time I looked at him.”
“And when did those symptoms start?” Michael asks quietly.
Brian takes the weed back, figuring that at this point, he needs it more than Michael does. “Second night I took him home.”
Michael blinks, floored. “Fuck,” he says.
“Yeah,” Brian huffs. “Fuck.”
—
It all started because the phone sex was just making things worse.
Brian knows in theory that he is good at phone sex. He used to do it all the time when he was too lazy or too high to go out and find someone to fuck at the baths or the club. He is very good at being methodical about it, and he likes the patience it requires. He’s always thought of it as personalized porn when one just wants a nice night in with their right hand.
With Justin, though, he was really bad at being methodical and patient.
“Your mouth,” Brian groaned. His head was thrown back against the pillow and he was jerking himself off slow as he could, listening to Justin’s harsh breathing on the other line. “I’d fuck it. I’d bruise it.” He thought, dizzy, of the place behind Justin’s ear, that place where he liked to hide his nose, breathe him in.
“Brian,” Justin gasped. “Brian, fuck, I miss your hands, I want your hands all over me—”
He listened to Justin come, making those shocked, guttural sounds in his throat, and came too.
An uncomfortable silence started to stretch.
“This,” said Justin, still catching his breath, “sucks.”
“Yeah,” Brian agreed, not even pretending to not know what Justin had meant.
“It sucks because all I can think about is how badly I want you and how much you aren’t here.”
“Yeah.”
So then they decided: no more phone sex. It was two days before Justin’s flight back down for Thanksgiving, anyway, and they had waited longer periods before. Maybe. Well, that one time when Brian was really ill, at least.
Brian called Justin the night before he was due in.
“Hello?” Justin answered. Brian breathed for a second. “...Brian,” Justin said. “I know it’s you. I can hear your deviated septum, and I have caller ID.”
“Hi,” Brian said, belatedly.
“It’s the middle of the night, did you just get in?”
The truth of it was, Brian had rolled over and Justin hadn’t been there. Confused, half-asleep, he had registered that the clock read 3:32 and groped for his phone before pressing speed dial two, wondering if Justin was crashing at Daphne’s for some reason.
“Why the fuck aren’t you asleep?” Brian deflected.
“Working.” Justin’s voice was muffled; Brian imagined him holding a paintbrush between his teeth.
“Well, don’t be too tired to fuck when you get here,” Brian said, more bitchily than he intended, but Justin just laughed.
“I miss you too, Brian. I’ll see you in eleven hours.”
Justin wasn’t too tired to fuck when he got there. Actually, he sucked Brian off in the men’s room at the airport. Then they went home and fucked some more. Justin begged off for a shower at around eight o’clock at night, but Brian just followed him in, and they ended up fucking in there, too, until their fingers were pruned and the water had started to run cold. Brian remembers how he touched every inch of Justin’s body. He’d been smiling like a fucking moron and had to keep rolling his lips in and sticking his nose into Justin’s neck to maintain some facade of dignity. In retrospect, it probably hadn’t worked too well. To be fair, Justin was beaming the whole time too.
Thanksgiving dinner was fine. Brian slipped Justin outside on the back porch for a smoke and they ended up shotgunning and then making out against the railing.Then they went home to the loft and collapsed in front of the TV. Then Justin went to get a beer. Then it all went to shit.
--
“Mikey, come on,” Brian tries, draping an arm around Michael’s neck.
“I’ll go to the club with you, but I’m not taking any Special K, E, GHB, or any of the other streets in Alphabet City,” Michael says, laughing at him a little. Brian doesn’t mind; Brian feels fabulous.
“I’m very disappointed in you,” says Brian seriously. “Everyone knows not to mix narcotics that way. Life,” he continues, rummaging around in the nightstand, “is all about balance.”
Triumphant, he dangles the bag of coke between thumb and forefinger, right up in Mikey’s face.
Michael, who’s never done anything harder than molly in his entire life and cried like a little bitch the first time he smoked pot, furrows his brows. “Brian…”
Brian pulls out his wallet, cuts himself a line on the nightstand with his platinum card, and snorts it. The head rush is immediate. It feels like lightning has shot down his spine.
“ —Brian,” Michael is saying. “Brian! Are you okay?”
Brian smiles, looking around for a shirt. “Mikey, I’m amazing; this shit was two hundred dollars a gram.”
“Is it really a good idea to go to the office, oh, I don’t know, tweaked out of your fucking mind?”
Brian is confused. “I’m not going to the office.”
“You fucking—“ Michael starts. He visibly collects himself. Brian, bored with the theatrics already, turns back to his closet. It’s a sleeveless black button down night. “I was being sarcastic, Brian. Christ, you really are high.”
Brian pulls the shirt over his head. “Well, uh, that was the idea.”
“Have you even eaten today?”
Brian stumbles down the bedroom steps and gestures vaguely toward the empty bucket of KFC Michael had insisted on buying. Michael’s hand is on his shoulder. Brian looks at the hand, the wrist, the arm, the shoulder, and then Michael’s face. “Listen, if this is about what you told me earlier…”
“Shut the fuck up, Michael.”
Michael’s eyebrows fly up. “Wow.”
“You don’t have to come,” Brian calls over his shoulder. He swings on his leather jacket and pulls on his shoes.
“Yeah,” Michael snorts, “Like I’m going to fucking leave you alone right now. Ha ha. That’s a funny one, Brian.”
—
Brian only noticed it because Justin started fiddling with his bottle cap. Brian didn’t mention it, decided it was nothing, and turned his attention back to the news. But Justin kept twisting the cap around his fingers. Brian stole another glance at him; he was focused on his hands.
Brian reached out and closed his left hand over Justin’s unoccupied right. “You been overworking it?” he asked.
Brian remembers still that last big smile Justin had flashed at him, his face lit blue from the light of the television screen. “No, it’s fine. I just—“ he looked down. Brian realized belatedly he had been working at Justin’s palm with his thumbs, trying to massage out any pain. He stilled the movement of his fingers.
“What?” Brian asked.
“This isn’t working,” said Justin.
Brian blinked. “What?” he asked again, stupidly.
“I think that hearing your voice is just making it harder,” said Justin. He met Brian’s eyes, brows furrowed. “All I can think of when we talk on the phone is how far away you are, and how much I miss you, and how much I wish you were with me. Like, at first it’s good to hear your voice, it’s always good to hear your voice, but then I remember that you’re here and I’m there.”
Brian forced a laugh. “You’re making me nervous, Justin.”
“Fuck,” Justin mumbled, burying his face in his hands. Brian’s fingers contracted around nothing. Justin shook his head. “No no no, that’s not what I meant. Shit, okay. Brian? I want you to listen to me. Are you listening?”
Brian shrugged. Nodded. Felt his heart sitting somewhere down in the area of his shoes. “Yeah, I’m listening.”
“I am not,” said Justin, “leaving you.”
“Okay.”
“Did you just hear me?” Justin asked. He sat up so he was kneeling on the couch beside Brian. Brian reached automatically for Justin’s waist. Justin took Brian’s face in his hands. “I fucked up just now. I’m sorry. I’m not leaving you. Stop looking at me like that.”
“Like what?”
Justin kissed him, hard, like he was sealing some kind of pact. “That smile. You have this smile for when I make you sad and I hate seeing it, so stop doing it.” Justin kissed him again.
“So what are you saying?” Brian asked, as Justin pulled back. He wanted to keep touching him, but he wasn’t entirely sure what was happening still.
“I don’t know,” confessed Justin, frustrated. “I just know that every time I talk to you on the phone I’m two seconds away from saying fuck you to the gallery owner and packing all my shit and coming back for good. But I’m so close, Brian. One more year, I swear to God, one more year and I’m there. I’ll be where I want to be, I’ll have gained enough visibility to come home.”
“I believe you,” said Brian, and he did. Still does, for the record.
Justin threaded their fingers together.
Brian looked at Justin’s profile. “So what do you want to do about it?”
Justin shook his head, shrugging. He turned to look at Brian, smiling wryly. “Fucking move back? Right now? Never leave the loft for the rest of my life? I know I’m probably just stressed about the show, but . . . “
Absolutely fucking not. “So let’s go cold turkey.”
“What?”
“Let’s go cold fucking turkey. Let’s stop calling each other.”
Justin’s mouth tipped down. “Brian, is this about what I said? Because I told you, I didn’t mean—“
Brian rolled his eyes. “No. Christ. Look, it’s simple when you lay it out. There’s a problem. The problem is that you want to come home when we talk on the phone. So, we stop talking on the phone.”
“That’s…” said Justin. He blinked. “That’s scary logical.”
“Take it or leave it,” Brian shrugged. No skin off my back, he was trying to telegraph.
What a fucking joke that one was.
Justin, always too perceptive, had narrowed his eyes. “Do you actually want to do that?”
“Fuck no,” Brian admitted, shrugging. “But I’m not about to watch you squander an opportunity because you,” he hitched his voice up into a falsetto and drew his eyebrows together, “miss me.”
“Don’t be an asshole about this,” Justin snapped. “I thought we were past that shit. Don’t mock me for feeling, God forbid, actual emotion for the man I almost married.”
Then don’t fucking remind me, thought Brian, remembering the rings still in Justin’s empty sock drawer. “I’m just saying,” said Brian, “That maybe it’s worth a try. Just until we see each other again at Christmas. By then your show will have opened and you’ll be rolling in your millions, and all without my voice there over the airwaves to tempt you away back to the fairytale land of Pittsburgh.”
Brian’s gentle teasing had worked, and Justin’s eyes had softened.
“This sucks,” he said anyway, echoing the words Brian had heard a week ago over the phone.
“We don’t have to,” Brian backtracked. “I just—I just want you to be…”
There was a long, stilted pause.
“Not-miserable?” Justin offered helpfully. He smiled, but it looked sad. Brian hated that smile. Brian hated it even more when Justin muttered, “Close enough for me.”
Well now he felt like absolute shit. “I’ve never wanted anything else.”
Justin met his eyes again. “Me either. For you, I mean.”
“Me, I’ll be fine,” Brian deflected easily. “A whole four weeks without you calling me to tell me the names of your pet roaches? Halle-fucking-lujah.”
“I called the exterminator,” Justin defended. “Also, I was high as shit that night.”
“You need to stop taking candy from strangers.”
And then: “Brian. Seriously.”
“It’s four weeks, Sunshine,” Brian said. “Not forever.”
Brian looked at Justin and knew exactly what he was thinking of, and it was those stupid three words that had come out of Brian’s mouth the last time they had a conversation like this. Justin surprised Brian, though, and didn’t mention it at all. The look had passed between them and that was affirmation of it enough. Not forever. Only a month. Only time.
“Just as an experiment? And just this once.”
“Just as an experiment,” Brian confirmed, “And just this once.”
Justin was biting on his lower lip. Brian, as usual, had the stray thought that he would rather bite it for him. “Cold turkey,” pondered Justin. “Does that mean no call or text or email either?”
“That’s up to you.”
Justin’s eyebrows shot up. “Um, no, it’s not. Last time you started giving me shit like that you spent four million dollars on a house with stables. Brian, I’m not sure if you know this, but I’m allergic to horses.”
Brian bit back his instinctive, but what do you want? “I said cold turkey and I meant it.” Okay; lie. He came clean: “I want you to stay in New York and I want you to finish what you started there. I want you to do whatever you have to do to make that happen.”
Justin scrutinized Brian’s face for a long moment. It made Brian, again, incredibly fucking nervous, not that he voiced that this time. Justin finally said, “One voicemail.”
“No voicemails. No contact.”
“One voicemail and two emails, take it or leave it.”
“One email, no voicemail.”
Justin pondered. “Two emails,” he said, “no voicemail.”
“But no replying to emails,” Brian stipulated. “Replies count toward the allotted number of emails. And no emails over six hundred characters long.”
Justin eyed him again. “Okay.”
“Okay?”
“Okay.”
“Can we stop saying—“
Justin kissed him sweetly then, and Brian thought that maybe, one day, perhaps when Hell had frozen over and Monica Lewinsky had subsequently stopped wearing that hideous fuchsia lipstick, he would finally learn how to keep his big fucking mouth shut.
—
It feels, thinks Brian fuzzily, very, very good. The VIP lounge had really been one of his greater ideas. All men, all the time. He runs a squeaky clean business, literally and figuratively, but that doesn’t mean the clientele mind showing up with enough illicit substances to kill a small horse, and that factor really adds to the ambience of the place.
“Congratulations me,” he mumbles. The trick whose mouth is attached to his neck stops moving.
“Huh?” he asks.
“Don’t worry about it,” Brian advises. The guy is way bigger than he is, so he doesn’t feel too bad about leaning all of his weight back on him while the two boys on their knees suck his cock. Brian fishes in his left trouser pocket, which is dropping almost to his knee, for another bottle of poppers. He takes a hit and passes it back to Beefy and Tall behind him.
“Good shit,” he compliments.
Brian says politely, “If you don’t stop covertly fondling my ass, you’ll be stuck in the back room until you start sprouting gray hairs.”
The trick wisely moves his hands north and gets back to work.
“Um, Mr. Novotny—“ Brian dimly hears George say.
Michael yells something shrill at the bouncer. Brian sighs and tightens a fist in the auburn head of hair below him. The one on the left is really good with his tongue, and the one on the right doesn’t have any apparent gag reflex. Brian thinks that if he wasn’t too twisted to stand entirely upright, he’d probably have already gotten off. Whiskey dick, Brian thinks sourly. More like Justin dick. Shit, now he’s just thinking of Justin’s dick; thankfully, the boys expertly follow the movement of his hips when he jerks unintentionally.
“Fuck me,” Brian huffs, angry at himself. Juice Junkie hopefully slides his hands lower on Brian’s hips.
“Not you,” Brian clarifies.
Brian tips his neck back and the trick starts working on his throat again. He hears two pairs of footsteps crossing the room toward him and doesn’t bother opening his eyes.
George sounds very apologetic. “Mr. Kinney, I tried to tell him that you were occupied—“
“I thought I told you to put him on the list as Betty Crocker, George, and to announce his presence loudly and repeatedly if he ever came up here. I’m incredibly disappointed in you right now.”
“Brian, it’s two in the morning.”
“Michael, it’s a Friday night.”
Michael huffs. “Come on, Brian. You’re not sleeping here.”
“I thought the Professor was teaching night classes.” Brian has almost completely lost interest in the blowjob by now, which is sad to him in a very fundamental and basic way. Still, though, he says, “I want one of you to choke on my cock until you’re blue in the face. Volunteers?”
They boys accordingly rearrange themselves. Thankfully, righty seems to have won the drawing of the straws for deep throating. Lefty dips his head and applies his tongue to Brian’s balls.
“I’m serious,” says Michael, very seriously. “Brian, what the fuck is going on?”
“Well, Mikey,” replies Brian, finally opening his eyes. “It looks like I’m getting my cock sucked by the two very nice and upstanding young gentlemen you see kneeling before you. Well, kneeling before me.”
Michael glowers. “I’m giving you ten more minutes and then I’m going home, whether you’re with me or not.”
Michael doesn’t move. Brian arches an eyebrow. “Go on, then. God forbid I have to look at you while I come.”
Michael walks out and Brian drifts for a long, long second. Having hands all over him when he’s this way has always made him feel filthy inside, like a thing, like an object, like a rotten meal that was chewed up and spat back out again. It confirms all his suspicions about himself. He likes that. He likes knowing what he is made of in his worst moments. The recipe hasn’t changed over the years, either: one part carbon, one part blood, and one part desperate fucking neediness.
“Good work, boys,” Brian says, pushing three pairs of hands away from him. He zips up his pants and clumsily fastens his belt back together. “But I’m bored as hell. Also? The ball you were sucking on is the fake one, congratulations; I couldn’t feel shit. Hey, Juice,” he says, turning around to look at the big guy, “How about you fuck these two instead?”
He pushes out of the lounge.
“Goodnight, Mr. Kinney,” says George.
There’s some really godawful German techno thumping through the dance floor as Brian makes his way out. The cold air hits his face so hard when he steps outside that he immediately feels at least fifty percent more sober than before. Then he starts to shiver. He’s left his coat inside.
“Finally,” Mikey bitches as Brian climbs into the car. He drives back to the loft and Brian closes his eyes.
“Will you be okay getting upstairs?” Michael asks when they arrive.
Brian tries to roll his eyes. “Christ,” he says. Michael doesn’t follow him into his building, and in the elevator, Brian stares at the the floor numbers a for a long minute before pushing four. He tips his head back against the wall and listens to the loud grinding noise of his lift. Then he goes inside, forgets to lock the door but remembers to set the alarm, pops some codeine, and falls into bed with his shoes still on.
—
It’s the buzzing noise that wakes him up.
Brian thinks he’s died and gone to hell. His stomach is trying to crawl up out of his throat and his tongue seems to have the consistency of dirty shag carpeting. He groans, stuffs his face into the pillow, and decides to attempt to sleep through his alarm.
It takes a second, but then Brian realizes: that noise isn’t his alarm.
It’s his alarm.
Brian decides to lay very, very still. He hears cursing coming from across the loft. Brian just upgraded his security; he’s about ninety percent sure that the police are supposed to be on their way, but isn’t entirely sure that he wants to risk yelling that out to his burglar. Especially in his weakened, shoe-wearing state.
Then the alarm shuts off. And then Justin, in sweatpants and a t-shirt, comes into view.
“What the fuck?” asks Brian. He sounds like an eighty year old chain smoker with laryngitis. “Did you just break in?”
“It was an accident,” says Justin, looking the way Brian feels. “Why are you wearing your shoes?”
Brian blinks, looking down at himself. Christ, is that jizz on his pants? Gross. As far as he knows, he didn’t even come once last night. He’s really losing his touch for weekend-long benders. Then he looks at Justin, who seems warm and tired and has already toed off his sneakers, and decides he doesn’t fucking care about embarking on round two of sodomy and sucking in the VIP Room.
So he says, “Come over here, I’m hungover as fuck.”
Justin looks at him for a long moment, his face completely unreadable. Then he pads up the steps to the bed and lays down on his side, facing Brian. Brian shoves his face into Justin’s collarbone to block out the sunlight, and Justin lets him fall asleep without saying a word.
—
When Brian wakes up again the left side of the bed is empty and cool and the sun is set low in the sky. He blinks a few times and wonders fuzzily if he had just dreamt about Justin being home, which is so incredibly pathetic and lame that he dismisses it immediately. Hallucinated it, maybe. No dreaming involved, though. But then he props himself up on his elbow and realizes that he’s not wearing his shoes anymore, and that there are sounds coming from the kitchen.
Pulling a fresh t-shirt over his head, Brian wanders out into the loft. Justin is eating a sandwich and brewing a pot of coffee.
“Hey,” says Brian.
Justin turns around, takes a bite, and stares. Chews and swallows. “What the fuck is going on?” Justin asks. His voice is tight and brittle. Brian blinks.
“The hell is that supposed to mean?”
“It means you need to tell me what the fuck is going on, Brian, right now. I called like five times last night.”
“Well, I was out.”
“Yeah, no fucking kidding,” Justin snaps, setting his sandwich down. “Did you even check your voicemail when you got in?”
“Sunshine, did you break the rules?” Brian asks, making his eyes go wide.
Justin looks like he’s ready to throw something. “Fuck the rules, Brian. I want you to tell me what’s wrong.”
“Nothing is wrong!” Brian finally breaks. “Why the fuck are you here? Why aren’t you in New York?”
“I’m here because Michael called me at midnight last night to tell me that you were falling to fucking bits and he didn’t know what was wrong or what to do about it. I’m here because I caught a fucking Greyhound at three in the morning, worried out of my fucking mind because you weren’t answering your fucking phone. I’m here because the last time you started acting like this it was because you had motherfucking testicular cancer, and you wouldn’t fucking tell me about it, and I had to find out by myself when your oncologist called about scheduling your radiation therapy. I am here because I am sick of your fucking shit, Brian, and I want to know right now what you’re not telling me.”
There are patches of a furious red flush high on Justin’s cheekbones. He’s breathtaking, so Brian sneers. “Aren’t you the sweetest little housewife.”
“If I didn’t love you so much I’d fucking choke you to death,” Justin says calmly.
“And so open and understanding of my kinks!”
Justin speaks slowly, like he’s trying very hard not to yell. “Answer me. Is the cancer back?”
The bright and brittle note in Justin’s voice suddenly makes sense: he’s scared. He’s scared shitless.
Pure hot rage rushes up from Brian's chest to his head. He sees red. “I’m going to fucking kill Michael,” he seethes. “This is none of his goddamn business. That stupid cunt. Jesus fucking Christ, you thought the cancer was back?”
Justin laughs hollowly, throwing his arms out. What do you want from me, it looks like he’s asking. “Are you saying that it’s not?”
“Of course it’s not, Justin, Christ.”
Justin slumps in relief, burying his face in his hands. “God,” he mumbles. “Oh my God.” He scrubs his hands hands over his face twice and collects himself before Brian can even think of moving over to him. “Then what is it? What?"
Brian shrugs. “Nothing.”
“Michael called me in the middle of the night raving like a lunatic, Brian.”
“He is one,” Brian snaps, anger rushing back.
“Quit bullshitting me when I just spent the entire night riding on a bus next to teenage runaways to see you,” says Justin. Brian knows that look. Justin is relieved, Justin is glad that Brian isn’t going to be spending the foreseeable future puking his guts out. Justin is pissed as hell.
“And why did you do that, by the way?” Brian asks. “You have an opening in two days. Stop being a drama queen.”
“Me?” asks Justin, advancing. “Me. You’re saying that to me after you start a weekend long bender of narcotics and booze and fucking for God only knows what ridiculous fucking reason? Okay, Brian. You’re completely right. I absolutely understand the logic of that.”
“It’s none of your business what I—“
Justin throws up his hands. “Oh, my God. Fuck it. You know what, I don’t even care anymore. You are so incredibly predictable. Some advice? Get the fuck over yourself.” He starts to walk toward the door, pausing to pull on his shoes. “I’ve got a bus to catch.”
There are a few things that Brian knows. He knows he loves dick. He knows he’s a miserable bastard. And he knows that if there is one thing he hates, more than homophobes, more than liars, more than queers who play at marriage and more than men who beat their kids, it is watching Justin walk away from him.
Justin’s hand is on the door when Brian says, “Sick of playing house already, Mrs. Kinney?”
Justin freezes. Then he turns. He walks straight up to Brian and pushes a finger into his chest. It worked, thinks Brian.
“Fuck,” Justin whispers, “you.”
“You don’t hear what you want and you leave,” Brian says. “After all this time I don’t know why I’m still surprised.”
Justin huffs bitterly, pushing away again. “I forgot how much you despise any display of human emotion. Please excuse me for feeling a modicum of concern for the man I almost married, Brian.”
“Will you stop fucking saying that?”
His shout is so loud that in the absence of it, the entire loft seems to echo with the silence. Brian finds that, as with most things, it’s hard to stop once he’s started. “The man you almost married,” he mocks. “The man you almost married. Well congratu-fucking-lations, Sunshine, you sure dodged a bullet there. Praise be to God that you don’t have to suffer through the hardship of living in the same house as me, much less the same fucking state.”
Justin, who has been gaping in surprise, finally shuts his mouth. His whole face twists up in unattractive confusion. “You’re the one who told me to move to New York! We decided together! What the hell is wrong with you?”
“Is that—all this was to you? Is that all this is?” Brian asks, gesturing around him, around the loft that was theirs, the life that was theirs, the bed that Brian fucking hates himself for sleeping on the right side of because he is unable, now, to spread out like he used to, because he can’t remember how not to leave the left side empty for Justin. “Is that what you tell all the fabulous people in the city? The man you almost married. Does that impress them, knowing that you wiggled your way out of monotony? Or do you tell them that so they feel sorry for you, because I left you at the altar? Or do you just say it to get pity fucked by all the romantic artsy types?”
Justin looks confused and upset and shockingly close to tears, a look Brian hasn’t seen in years; a look that says Brian is being unbelievably cruel. “Brian, why—“
“We’re fucking miserable, Sunshine!” Brian shouts, spreading his arms wide. “No matter where you are, no matter where I am. We’d have been miserable married and here we are: miserable apart, too. We are perfect for making each other fucking sick with misery.”
“No,” Justin says, working his jaw ferociously. “No, Brian, we aren’t.”
“Then what the fuck is this?” asks Brian. “What the fuck are we doing? Why are we still trying, if all I am to you, all I’ll ever be, is the man you almost married? Let me tell you how it works. You’ll find someone in the Big Apple. You’ll fuck them and then you’ll fall in love with them. He’ll put a ring on your finger and you’ll buy yourselves a dog and two point five kids from Lithuania. Accept it. Move the fuck on with your life so that I can finally get on with mine.”
Justin stares at him for a minute. Then he barks out a laugh that is completely devoid of all humor. “You’re so fucking full of your own bullshit, Brian, it’s unbelievable.”
“You’re going to leave,” Brian yells. “I know you are. So just fucking do it already. Stop making me wait.”
He hadn’t meant to say that. That is exactly what he had wanted to not say. Shaken, Brian turns away, walking abruptly in the direction of the bedroom.
“Brian,” Justin says, not laughing anymore. “Why did you ask me to marry you? That first time, after the bombing. Why did you ask me to marry you.”
Brian turns back. What a low fucking blow. “You know why.”
Justin says, deceptively calm, “No, I don’t think I do anymore. Tell me.”
Fuck it, thinks Brian. Fuck it; Justin has always seen right through him.
“Because I didn’t want you to leave. Because I would do anything to make you stay.”
“There,” says Justin quietly. “That’s why. That’s why it works. That’s why we’re still trying. Because where has backing down or giving up ever gotten either of us? We don’t even know, because we’ve never done it, because it’s not in our nature. Brian,” he continues, stepping closer, “haven’t you figured it out yet? You never…you never had to buy the house, or — or the rings, or insist on my golden fucking gardenias. The only thing I ever wanted, the only thing I ever needed, was for you to look me in the eye and ask me to stay. I’m shit at denying you anything. I couldn’t even if I wanted to, and I’ve never wanted to. All I ever needed was for you to fight for this, instead of letting me walk away while telling yourself you’re doing me a favor. That’s all. That’s it.”
Brian doesn’t know what the fuck he’s supposed to say to that. “You wanted to get married, Justin,” he finally accuses. Means to accuse. It ends up sounding more confused than anything.
Justin smiles wryly. “I got caught up,” he says. “Have you ever noticed that we’re just fine on our own until we remember the outside world exists? Everyone kept telling me, out loud or no, that we would never really belong to each other. And I got so caught up that I forgot what I really wanted.”
“And what’s that?” asks Brian.
“You,” says Justin simply, shrugging. “Just you. Whether that’s living in a country manor with four jacuzzis and a pool or in the loft when neither of us have a penny or a career to our names. Whether you’re miserable and sick or going on the Liberty Ride. I want you when we’re fighting just as much as I want you when we’re happy. So stop trying to get me to leave. If I was leaving I would have left a long time ago.”
Brian finds, with abrupt terror, that he can’t really breathe. Justin moves closer and rests his palms on Brian’s shoulders. For all his talent at bullshitting people with words at work, Brian never really learned how to manipulate the words that come out of his mouth, at least not where Justin is concerned.
So Brian looks down, shaking his head. “In sickness and in health?” he mutters, aiming for mocking. “For richer or for poorer?”
“For better or for worse,” Justin replies easily. When Brian meets his eyes again Justin’s face is so open and sure that all Brian feels is fear. Justin repeats, “Haven’t you figured it out yet?”
“Enlighten me.”
Justin smiles. Only the corner of his mouth moves, but Brian can see it anyway. “The wedding was just a formality. We’ve already done it all. We’ve been a fucking married couple for years, Brian. We just didn’t know it yet.”
Brian heaves a sigh. He tips their foreheads together and shuts his eyes. This has been a terrible whirlwind fucking day and he wants to go back to sleep. But he has to tell Justin this first. “Don’t leave.”
“Aren’t you listening?” Justin asks, pulling back. His eyebrows are knit together again. “I’m not—“
Brian grabs Justin’s face in his hands. He hopes he isn’t too late. “Stay,” he says. “I want you to stay.”
And Justin gets it. He’s aways been a clever boy. He closes his hands over Brian’s. “I will,” Justin murmurs. “I do.”
Unable to help himself any longer, Brian presses their mouths together. Justin’s hands fly immediately to clutch in Brian’s hair, and their bodies are abruptly, perfectly flush. Brian can’t actually believe that they’ve been sharing air for nearly twenty four hours and haven’t done this yet. It seems like cruel and unusual punishment. And for what? Brian doesn’t even care to remember anymore.
“Jumped the gun a little,” Justin mumbles, smiling.
Brian presses his nose into the hair above Justin’s ear. He smells stale, like public transit and sweat. Brian exists in that moment to love him. He can feel the steady thrum of Justin’s heartbeat under his palms. “I do,” Brian says into Justin’s ear.
Then he pulls back, tilting his head to the side. “I mean, I guess.”
Justin snakes an arm down and punches him in the stomach, hard. Brian lets out an oof. Justin’s nose is crinkled up with happiness. “You dick!” he laughs. Brian thinks a lot of disgusting, romantic things then. Chiefly, he wonders if it’s possible to go blind from watching that smile break over Justin’s face.
“Yes,” replies Brian seriously, “Let’s talk about my dick.”
“This is why we never could’ve had a regular wedding,” Justin says. He frenches Brian ferociously for a second, and continues, in between kisses: “How the fuck would I have possibly waited through the ceremony and reception to tear off all your clothes? We would have scandalized all the breeders.” Then he suddenly pulls back, squinting. “I swear to God, though, Brian. If you ever call me ‘Mrs. Kinney’ ever again, I won’t suck your cock for a year.”
Brian tilts his head back, arms looped around Justin’s waist. He hums.“You know, I had these two guys sucking my dick last night. It was all sloppy and wet. They were dying for me to fuck them.”
Justin’s eyes have gone darker. “And?”
“And I couldn’t even fucking enjoy it,” Brian admits quietly, nuzzling his face into Justin’s ear, “Because all I could think of was that they weren’t you.”
Justin, apparently sick of talking already, smashes their mouths back together.
“I fucking missed you,” Brian mumbles, somehow not sick of talking. Justin just kisses him again. “I really fucking missed you, Jesus Christ. I feel like I haven’t seen you in years.”
Justin is smiling. “Brian,” he says, “Shush. I want to make out with you.”
“Four million downpayment on a house, three thousand on rings from Tiffany, and what do I get?” Brian’s voice goes falsetto. “Put your legs in the air, dear, and think of jockstraps.”
Justin laughs, full-throated, and buries his face in Brian’s shoulder. He rubs his nose there, and after a moment they’re still just standing, arms around one another. Completely wasting, in Brian’s opinion, their not-wedding night.
“We should shower,” Justin murmurs. “You smell terrible.”
Brian snorts. “Well you smell like public transit, Sunshine. Five hours of it.”
“Like you can complain,” counters Justin. “I fucked you that one time after you had spent at least twenty-four hours in a car with Michael and Ted and Em without a shower or a toothbrush.”
Brian does think that point is fair, but then he remembers the look on Justin’s face and the way he kept smelling his neck and petting at his sweaty hair. That was also the day that Justin spent at least twenty minutes biting Brian’s nipples until Brian had no other choice but to physically throw Justin down on the hotel bed. The point, though, Brian remembers, is this: “You got off on it. I was manly.”
“You smelled like pot and sweat and I wanted you to make me scream,” Justin murmurs hotly, right into Brian’s ear. “I remember you doing a pretty good job of it, too.”
Brian pulls back, raising an incredulous eyebrow.
Justin rolls his eyes. “Yeah, so the people in the room next door called the front desk, big deal, four for you.”
“You’re damn right they did,” Brian says lowly, and bends to kiss Justin. The world is beginning to tilt upright again, and Brian is trying to right his footing. In light of these efforts, he moves to nose behind Justin’s ear, breathing him in deep—public transit, sure; stale cigarettes and sleeplessness too, but beneath it all, Justin.
“Shower,” Justin insists.
They stumble up the bedroom steps, trying not to break contact. They make it into the bathroom. They strip down and step inside. Justin twists the knob until the water is approximately four thousand degrees, melting all the tension from Brian’s muscles.
“Did you buy more of my soap?” Justin asks, surprised, when Brian hands him the bar.
Brian shrugs one shoulder. He did, and Justin knows he did, so it’s not like he has to say it out loud. The talking part of this evening has clearly come and gone.
One of Brian’s favorite things about showers with Justin, ranking just below the mutual nudity and slippery wetness, is that Justin is just the right height for Brian to wash his hair so he can listen to him purr like the engine of the Vette. It’s getting longer now, Justin’s hair. Brian uses it to tug his head to the side for easier access to kiss his neck. When he does, he tastes the run-off of bitter shampoo and the texture of Justin’s skin.
Justin turns around in his arms then, wrapping his arms around Brian’s hips. Their cocks press together, half hard, and Justin nuzzles at Brian’s collarbone. “I like it more this way,” he says. Brian knows immediately what he’s talking about. “No one else. Only us. This is the way we should have planned it from the beginning.”
Brian thinks that what happened tonight is one of those things you don’t really plan ahead for. At least, Brian doesn’t. All the promises that he’s made to other people in his life seem to have happened mostly by accident and partially by circumstance. When Brian has time to think over his promises before he makes them, everything usually goes to shit.
“It’s like we figured out a secret,” Justin murmurs, tilting his head against Brian’s chin. Brian can feel Justin’s smile against his throat. “I like that, too.”
Brian kisses him then, and water runs down both their faces, pooling between their mouths.
“Fuck me,” says Justin. An urgent tone has entered his voice. “Come on, right now.”
Brian finds a condom and lube in the soap dish. Justin has already turned to face the shower wall, hands pressed to the glass, the dip of his back and his ass pale and covered in water droplets. Brian’s head spins. He isn’t entirely sure how they’ve ended up here when twenty minutes ago they were standing on opposite sides of the kitchen and yelling themselves hoarse. Moreover, he doesn’t really care. Justin does that to him. This kid is too much.
Brian traces a finger down Justin’s spine. Justin presses his forehead to the glass. Brian, changing his mind, drops the condom and lube onto the shower floor. He puts both hands on Justin’s hips, spins him around, and then drops to his knees.
“Brian,” Justin moans, sounding surprised. Brian doesn’t know why; it makes complete sense to him that after all this, the only thing he should really want to do is taste him.
Brian kisses under Justin’s sternum and smooths his palms down the taper of Justin’s hips and back around to his ass. He swirls his tongue in Justin’s bellybutton. Justin’s cock brushes against Brian’s throat, hot and damp. Justin tangles his fingers in Brian’s hair as Brian noses along his happy trail. And then Brian sucks Justin’s cock into his mouth, gratified when he hears Justin’s head fall back against the glass.
He sucks hard and then pulls back to tongue along the slit of Justin’s cock. The skin is so soft and tight there it makes Brian dizzy. Justin makes a strangled noise and his hands tighten in Brian’s hair, sending stings from Brian’s scalp to his shoulders. Brian moans at both the taste and the pain. Justin, knowing what Brian wants, cups a hand under Brian’s skull. With his long fingers he tugs at the hair at the base of Brian’s neck. Brian shudders all over.
He opens his throat and takes Justin all the way down. He buries his nose in the hair at the base of Justin’s cock, and then he swallows, and Justin’s hips jerk against his face, crushing his nose into Justin’s pubic bone. Brian almost can’t hear the noises Justin is making over the pounding of blood in his own ears. He grabs Justin’s hips and pushes his ass back against the wall. Justin pulls his hair harder. Brian unhinges his jaw so his lips don’t touch Justin’s cock, even though it’s still shoved down his throat, and rubs his tongue against the underside of it, feeling keenly the heavy pulse of blood and the outline of the vein. It’s absolutely filthy, filthier and hotter than the feeling of two mouths on his own dick last night. Justin makes a wild noise. And then Brian flicks his eyes up deliberately and sucks so hard his cheeks hollow out.
“Oh, God,” Justin gasps. He twists his hand even more tightly in Brian’s hair, and they look at each other. Brian flicks his tongue just under the head of Justin’s cock. Then he sucks Justin back all the way down and buries his face in Justin’s skin. “Brian,” Justin chants, “Brian, Brian,” and then he breaks off into those broken and low and shocked noises that means he’s about to come. Brian sucks and lets Justin thrust into his mouth. He feels like he’s kissing Justin’s hips; his upper lip is almost touching Justin’s pelvis. When Justin starts to come, Brian takes over, bobbing his head, hollowing his cheeks out again. Oh, oh, oh, Justin groans, and Brian relishes in the hard, uncontrollable jerk of Justin’s cock in his mouth. He’s shoved himself so deep down Brian’s throat that Brian can barely taste him. Justin keeps coming, and Brian swallows it all. He pulls off, pins Justin’s cock up against his belly with a thumb beneath the head, and nuzzles at his balls, up the shaft. Brian feels the muscles in Justin’s stomach contract under his hand and then Justin is hauling Brian up his body by the ears. He crushes their mouths together, licking the taste of himself from Brian’s tongue.
Brian reaches for another condom and another packet of lube, unwilling to bend down and fish the original set from where they’ve settled by the drain. He puts the foil packet in his mouth and turns Justin back to face the wall. On shaky knees, Justin goes. He hisses, and Brian knows it’s at the dichotomy: freezing glass pressed to his chest, Brian’s warm body covering his back. He moans weakly at the sound of Brian ripping the condom open with his teeth. Brian slides it on with shaking hands. He’s so fucking hard; he doesn’t really understand how he forgot about that before, while he was on his knees. He tears open the lube, too, squeezes it onto his palm and spreads it over his own cock. He drops both packets onto the shower floor.
“Are—“
“Yes,” Justin gasps.
Brian doesn’t wait. With both his hands he grabs Justin’s ass, kneading, spreading. He presses a kiss to the back of Justin’s neck and pushes in, past the rings of resistance. He closes his hands over Justin’s hips and pulls them together, until he’s all the way inside.
“Bri—an,” Justin says, his voice hitching. Brian pulls out and thrusts back in, hard. Justin squeaks. Brian wants to laugh, but Justin is so tight he’s afraid that if he does he’ll come.
Brian starts to move. On each stroke in Justin’s breath hitches in his chest and his ass presses intimately flush against Brian’s pelvis. Brian reaches down a hand and cups Justin’s cock in his palm; he’s getting hard again. Brian bites at the pretty, near-transparent shell of Justin’s ear. He needs to be closer. With both hands, Brian rakes his blunt fingernails, hard, from Justin’s hips, up his belly, over his ribs, and then back down again. Justin’s skin jumps under Brian’s hands and he gasps, his entire body arching back. He reaches back a hand and fists it in Brian’s hair, crushing Brian’s face into his neck. Brian breathes him in; the snap of his hips has become faster. The little hurt noises Justin is making only spur him on.
Brian wraps one arm low around Justin’s hip, fisting his cock. His left arm slides up Justin’s torso, his skin soft, so soft, pulling Justin until they are completely pressed together, back to chest, shoulder to shoulder, ass to cock. He can’t move as quickly this way, but he’s pushed in deeper. He starts to jerk Justin off.
“You know,” Brian says, aiming for casual. He hitches his hips, changing the angle. Justin yelps, his hands flying above his head to brace against the glass for balance. He’s been forced up onto his toes, and Brian moves his left arm lower, helping support his weight.
Brian says, into Justin’s ear, “There is one thing we haven’t done yet.”
“Oh,” gasps Justin, shocked, “Oh, Brian.”
“Don’t you want to feel me inside you?” Brian asks lowly. He licks Justin’s pretty pink ear, and then bites it, hard. “I want to feel you, all of you. Justin, Christ. I’ll split you open on my bare cock and fuck you until you’re a sobbing mess on my sheets. I’m going to come inside your tight, hot little ass, and then I’m going to watch it drip out of you…I’ll lick you clean. I’ll push my fingers inside you with only my come as lube. You’ll be a mess. You’ll be a wet, open mess. And then I’ll fuck you again.”
Justin spills suddenly over Brian’s hand, his shriek muffled in his own elbow. The sound is so different from his usual low moans, so high and desperate, his ass clamping like a vice around Brian’s cock, that Brian can’t help himself, can’t control it. He pulls Justin against him, slamming inside with a selfish force that surprises him. He thinks of filling Justin up, of shooting inside of him raw, and comes too. His mind blitzes out. It’s so good it hurts. He bites his own lip until it bleeds and his shocked groans echo on the tiles.
Justin is sagging, fucked out, in Brian’s arms. Brian pulls out slowly and carefully, tosses the condom to the shower floor, fuck it, and turns Justin around. Justin slumps against him, lowering himself back onto flat feet as they kiss. Brian still feels crazed. He drops to his knees again and Justin stumbles at the suddenness and braces his hands on Brian’s shoulders for balance. Brian nuzzles into Justin’s softening cock, kisses up his pelvis. He licks Justin’s stomach clean of come, bites at each nipple, gets back to his feet. There’s a smear of come just under the hollow of Justin’s throat and Brian licks it too, sucking at Justin’s soft skin there. And then he’s standing and looking at Justin again, at his hazy blue eyes and his red wanting mouth. Brian kisses him.
Somehow they manage to get into bed, even though they’re still damp. Justin shoves his face into Brian’s neck, his breath and his eyelashes tickling under Brian’s ear. Sated, Brian rubs his hands across Justin’s back, following the dip of his spine, up to his shoulders, back down again.
“We should get not-married more often,” Justin mumbles.
Brian reaches down and pinches Justin’s ass.
—
“So. You sure were happy to see my cock.”
“It missed me.”
“Um,” says Justin, raising an eyebrow. “Sure.” And then he lets out a cough that sounds suspiciously like, “Size queen.”
Brian raises an eyebrow. Justin blinks innocently back. Mindful of his lit cigarette, Brian flips Justin onto his back and digs a finger into his side. “What did you just say, Taylor?” he asks. Justin yelps a very ungentlemanly laugh, batting Brian’s hand away.
“You heard me, Mr. Kinney.”
Brian catches both of Justin’s flailing wrists in one hand and pins them above his head to the pillow. Justin stretches languidly and smiles up at him, rubbing the sole of his foot against Brian’s calf.
Brian grins. He takes a drag off his cigarette and then holds it to Justin’s mouth. Justin sucks in a lungful of smoke and then Brian releases Justin’s wrists to stub the cigarette out in the ashtray on the bedside table. Justin threads their fingers together and kisses Brian’s neck. Brian combs his both of his hands through Justin’s hair.
They’ve slept, fucked, eaten, and fucked, and it’s only noon; Brian is pretty impressed with their collective initiative. But Brian still has something to ask. He kisses Justin, on the mouth and then the cheek, and rolls off him to lay on his side. He’s shit at talking about potentially uncomfortable topics with Justin pressed up all warm and naked against him like that.
“So, um,” Brian starts, and immediately rolls his eyes at himself. Christ, focus. “We should book you a flight tonight, get you back in time for the opening tomorrow.”
Justin looks confused. “What?” he asks.
“Sunshine, I know that was a great fuck—“
Justin smacks him.
“—But you can’t have forgotten your big day that easily.”
“Oh, that,” says Justin. “I emailed you about it, remember?”
Brian sits up. “You emailed me?”
Justin’s brow is really furrowed now. “Yeah, of course. You didn’t get that one?”
“That one?” Brian repeats, feeling like a particularly stupid parrot.
“Yeah, I emailed you last week when Laura decided to move up the opening to attract any potential holiday buyers. The show started three days ago.”
Brian blinks. “You emailed me?” he repeats.
“Like at least twice a day!” Justin says, sitting up now too. “I totally broke the rules, but I missed you like crazy and I was so excited that—Brian?”
Brian has dived over the edge of the bed, swearing colorfully. He digs around in the pockets of his discarded jeans until he finds his phone. He turns it on, ignores the influx of messages from his nosy fucking friends, and opens his email. There’s not a single fucking message. He shoves the phone at Justin.
“Look,” he demands.
Justin squints at the phone. “Brian, I’m not sure what I’m…” he clicks around for a second and taps a few things onto the tiny keyboard. Then his eyebrows fly up. He hands the phone back to Brian.
In the spam box, there are thirty three unread messages. Brian, totally fucking lost, clicks on the first one. You wouldn’t believe what that asshole Francois said…I think I have fucking termites…I found this pizza joint on Avenue A…and on and on. All of them, just random, sentence-long updates of Justin’s day to day life in the city. “What,” Brian mutters. And then he sees that Justin’s email address is different; he’s on Yahoo now.
Brian looks up because the bed seems to be shaking. Justin has his face buried in his hands.
He’s wheezing, the little shit.
“Oh my God,” he says, waving a hand weakly. “Oh my fucking God, Brian, is that what all this was about? Were you fucking your brains out and trying to drown yourself in booze all because you thought I didn't email you? Because your email account didn’t recognize my new address and sorted it into the spam folder?”
“Yeah, very fucking funny,” Brian snaps.
“No,” says Justin, still chuckling. He crawls into Brian’s lap and starts pressing kisses along Brian’s neck. Brian frowns. “No no, I’m not laughing at you, I’m just —“ he bursts into giggles again and stuffs his face into Brian’s cheek. Brian rolls his eyes. “Oh my god, it’s just really funny.”
Brian pushes at Justin’s shoulders in a vain attempt to dislodge him. “Brian,” Justin chuckles, kissing Brian’s cheek, his chin, under his eye. “Brian, do you remember when Deb made us watch The Notebook with her because she and Horvath had some dumb fight, and we spent the whole time trying not to commit ritual suicide because Michael kept hitting you whenever we started making out?”
“I’ve accepted that, unfortunately, I will always remember it,” says Brian suspiciously. “Especially when we all had to pretend that Drew wasn’t crying at the end.”
Justin pulls back, his eyes bright with laughter. “I wrote you three hundred and sixty-five letters,” he says, in what he clearly thinks is his best Ryan Gosling voice. But then he snorts again and it kind of ruins the effect. “I wrote you every day for a year.”
“You little shit,” Brian says, finally laughing too. He socks Justin in the arm. “Weren’t you pissed that I wasn’t emailing you back?”
That sets Justin off again. “I just thought you were being an asshole,” he gasps. “Oh, fuck, I can’t fucking breathe.”
Brian sticks a finger in Justin’s side and Justin grabs Brian’s wrists. Some kicking happens, and Brian flips them over, trying to break Justin’s iron grip. He won’t budge. But Brian is laughing now too, and Justin takes advantage of that, digging his bony fucking fingers into Brian’s ribs. Brian jerks, trying to get away, and Justin grabs his wrists again. Then he hooks his ankles around Brian’s waist, grinning insouciantly up at him.
“Stop trying to top me from the bottom,” Brian advises. “Haven’t you learned your lesson?”
“What, the lesson that you’re a size queen?”
Brian bites Justin’s nose.
“You missed me,” Justin teases gently. He says it differently now from the way he said it when he was eighteen; he’s apologizing for a fact, not fishing for an answer.
“Yeah, well, can you blame me?” Brian says. “You’ve got better suction than a Hoover.”
“Ah,” sighs Justin, “I’m sorry I left you all alone in the Pitts with nary a gay man in sight who really knows how to suck dick.”
Brian puts on his confused face. “I was talking about your ass.”
“Gross,” Justin says pointedly, laughing. He kisses Brian on the mouth briefly. Then he reaches up a hand to stroke down Brian’s face. “That must have been the dumbest idea we’ve ever had."
“Without a doubt.”
The set of Justin’s mouth has gone serious. “Don’t go there again, okay?” he asks. He presses his thumb to Brian’s lower lip and rests it there. “Wherever you were, don’t go there again.”
“I’ll try,” says Brian honestly. “I can’t make any promises.”
“Okay,” says Justin. And then, “I love you,” so easily. Brian is jealous of that easiness. He figures, though, that he has time to get there.
“Also, Brian,” Justin says, when they’ve stopped kissing, “Put my new fucking email on your contacts list.”
Brian heaves a put-upon sigh. “There’s no getting rid of you now, is there?”
Justin scrunches up his nose. “Not really,” he says. He brushes his mouth against Brian’s, and murmurs wetly: “Mrs. Taylor.”
In the ensuing scuffle someone manages to actually put a tear in the silk sheets and Brian stubs a toe. Justin’s ass is going to be red for a week, but judging by the way he keeps gasping spank me harder, Brian doesn’t think he really minds.
—
“You look…” Cynthia squints. “Off.”
“You’re fired,” snaps Brian. “I look fucking glorious.”
Cynthia isn’t fazed. “No, I mean you look…chipper.”
“What, I’m not allowed to enjoy a protein shake in peace before I rip H&R a collective new asshole?” asks Brian flatly.
Cynthia is still squinting. “You can’t fool me, Kinney,” she says at length. And then she smirks. “Hmm. Nice bling.”
“Get out,” Brian advises, pasting on a big fake smile.
“Happy New Year, boss,” Cynthia calls as she leaves.
Brian twists the platinum band around his index finger. His kid and Justin and the munchers might be gone for the next several weeks, he thinks, and sure, it’s a Monday morning, but at least there won’t be any more godawful Christmas decorations offending his eyes when he goes to the diner for lunch. And at least he knows where Justin’s ring is. It isn't collecting dust in a sock drawer anymore, that's for damn sure.