QaF Fic: Into the Ether, 601
Fandom: QaF
Title: Into the Ether, 601
Pairing: Brian/Justin
Rating: NC-17 to be safe.
Warnings: Spoilers for all seasons.
A/N: Thanks to my beta danijo1.

Have you read 'After the End' first? It can be found: here

-*-

Prologue.

Some people say that every decision you make will have impact on your future, that once you have made a choice it is set in stone.

But isn’t that way of thinking likely to lead to a life of little action, where everything is carefully planned out to the last little detail? Isn’t there such a thing as thinking too much and living too little?

The older you get the more you realize that the choices you make don’t have to last forever, that one day it can seem as if your destiny is unshakable and the next it is all up in the air.

Very little in life is permanent, which is why it’s even more important to take each day as it comes, worrying as little as possible, enjoying every new experience as much as you can.

But that doesn’t mean that there aren’t any regrets, and it certainly doesn’t mean that just because things seem to be looking brighter one minute that they can’t fade to black in the next.

-*-

I. Brian

It wasn’t until the overhead light flashed on, indicating you could unbuckle your seatbelts, that Justin looked over at you.

"Are you really real?" he asked, looked at you tentatively, as if too hard a gaze would somehow make you disappear. "Or are you a figment of my imagination?"

You stared at him for a second and then reached across for his hand, pulling it over onto your lap where you held it between both of your own.

"I’m real, Sunshine," you replied, sucking your bottom lip into your mouth.

He stared back for a while then nodded and looked out of the window, watching the clouds roll by.

You sighed and closed your eyes, sitting back in your seat.

You supposed you should have expected this reaction from him; it’s not like you made extensive plans to hop on the flight. In fact, if anyone had told you even the night before that you would be sitting next to him on the plane, you would have laughed at them and wondered what drugs they had been taking.

Your decision had been made in the split-second when you had both entered the airport terminal. When it came down to it, you just couldn’t let him walk out of your life again.

Not when you had a pretty good idea he would never make it back.

It was, essentially, an inherently selfish decision. When it came down to the bare bones of the matter, you realized that if you let him slip away from you again then that would be it: you would be on your own forever.

There would be nobody else for you. It was a fucking miracle you had even let Justin inside. You knew now that you had the capacity to feel for someone else, that you could splay yourself open and let someone else slip inside. But you couldn’t kid yourself into thinking you would be able to do it for anyone else other than him.

You couldn’t. You wouldn’t. And what’s more, you didn’t even want to.

When Justin had first left for New York, you thought that it was all over for you. That whatever chance you had for developing some sort of lasting relationship, no matter how much you pretended you didn’t do them in the first place, it had gone away the moment he had walked out of the door.

It had taken so much effort to get to that point, so much fucking energy just to admit to yourself that somehow he had crept into you while you weren’t looking, that you knew you had nothing left with which to ever attempt trying it again.

In the months following his departure you had closed down the hatches, barricading yourself once more in the little cocoon of bravado and ego that you kept around you like an iron fortress.

It was like a suit of armour, a shell of a mollusk that you had built up, an essential protection for the fucking vulnerable flesh you knew lay underneath, at your core.

It had been erected out of necessity, and somehow he had managed to cut through all that, pretty much from the start, as if somehow he had been given the key -the only person who knew the pass-code- and he had every intention of using it.

You had fought against him every step of the way, of course you had. You clung onto your walls for dear life, even at the expense of yourself, because no matter how much it hurt to feel you were losing him each and every time, at the hands of Chris Hobbes and his trusty baseball bat, at the hands of Ethan, that was a pain you could deal with. After all, you had expected it all along. Love, partnership, companionship, those were all the things that happened to other people.

Never you.

It was the pain of opening yourself up and laying out your vital organs for him to do with what he liked, that was what you couldn’t cope with.

You didn’t think you could even now.

But he had pulled back the layers one at a time, paying no heed to the defnses you had put in place, setting off your detonators systematically, one at a time, while he was standing a safe distance away, and yet you still clung onto the belief that all of it was only temporary.

By the time you had allowed yourself to feel, willingly pushing back the walls to let him glimpse the parts of you that you kept hidden inside, it was just too late.

And he made his decision to go. To leave you behind.

That was when you closed up again; adding extra reinforcement so that there was no way anybody would find their way back, constructing a maze to your heart that was full of dead ends, numerous hazards littered along the way.

But then he came back, still carrying his fucking key as if it wasn’t something he had picked up, but something he naturally came with.

He just automatically fit because he was Justin.

And you started to feel again.

You didn’t have a fucking clue what you were doing if you were honest with yourself. You had no idea if it would even work out. Your decision to get on a plane with him was born purely through instinct, driven by your emotions. Logic didn’t come into it, and you think that if it had then you would never have gone through with it in the first place.

But the reality of it all was that you had, and there was no changing that.

Somehow you had to find a way to make it work.

-*-

II. Justin

You stared out of the window, watching the tumulous wisps of cloud floating by, and tried to sort out how you were feeling.

Your first reaction had been complete and utter shock, and you could still feel it there, pushing at the edges of your consciousness, a light blanket over everything else.

The last thing you had expected was for him to produce a ticket as if he was a magician pulling a rabbit out of a hat. You were all set to say goodbye. You’d already started walking away, for god’s sake! But as he liked to do, Brian had managed to surprise you in the best way he knew how.

The second emotion to hit you was awe - an almost childlike wonder for the man you thought you knew but who never ceased to amaze you, continually doing something else that made you stop and stare and wonder if you ever truly understood him in the first place.

He never really spoke about his reasons, he still hadn’t, but he didn’t really have to. You’d long ago stopped using words as a bench-mark for figuring him out; he simply didn’t work that way. If the time you had spent with Ethan had taught you anything it was that words came easy, tripping over each other as they spilled out of his mouth like yesterday’s garbage.

But that’s all they had been - words. Brian had given you something worth so much more than that, something you could barely get your head around never mind have a hope in summing up with some sort of cohesive sentence.

Words were inadequate; you realized that now, feeling a little ashamed that someone who expressed themselves visually, through the medium of paint and charcoal, had never managed to work that out before.

The words you had always wanted to hear from him, the words you felt you needed to hear, they were nothing more than building-block letters, arranged in such a way to produce three tiny words that you felt could represent something you had been longing for.

But it was so much bigger than that, and that’s all they were, a representation. You hadn’t needed to hear them, not really, to realize that every day you were with him he gave them to you many times over. They were there in the way he pressed his body against yours, covering you as if he felt he needed to shield you from something, sometimes even yourself. They were there in the way he seemed to know what you needed, often before you even had a clue yourself. They were there in the little looks he would give you in the diner over breakfast, and in the way his eyes failed to shutter off from his heart when you fucked up and hurt him.

You realized how god damn stupid you were not to see it before, that if you had the capacity to hurt him then he must have always felt something for you.

So no, you didn’t need to hear his words to understand why he was coming with you to New York. You just knew.

You squeezed his hand and risked a glance in his direction, smiling slightly when you saw him sitting in his seat, his head tilted back, his eyes closed, and then turned back to the window to try and make sense of the other emotions floating around your head like a potent cocktail of drugs.

There was love there, definitely love, and an overwhelming need to look after him, to keep him safe.

He was putting himself on the line by doing this, by making the conscious decision to follow you rather than wait and hope you would go back to him eventually.

Which lead to relief, the sweet feeling of relief that seemed to satiate that horrible thirst you had been carrying around the entire time you were in Pittsburgh.

It had been like a compelling force screaming at you to stay while all the time you knew you couldn’t.

And now that had gone because he had made the decision for you, opening himself and letting you have the option of everything - of not having to war with yourself anymore, the continual battle between heart and head, going back to him and trying to focus on your career.

With the relief came a toxic shot of determination, a stubborn will that told you that no matter what happened, you were still going to put everything you could into your art. You wouldn’t let yourself get sidetracked, no matter how this turned out with him.

And with that came the stride for independence, licking at your heels. You knew instinctively that it was important, that you still had a way to go until you could feel you were truly your own person, someone who knew his own mind.

Desire was thrown into the mix too, simmering below everything else, a pressing heat to try and make it work with him on your terms as well as his. You weren’t some seventeen year old twink anymore. You may not have felt that in terms of your career you were exactly where you wanted to be, but you knew enough about what you needed now to realize that you had to stop with the games, sidestepping him every time he threw you a ball from leftfield instead of stepping forward and catching it. Sometimes even going so far as to throw it back.

Not just for your sake either, but for his too. In so many ways this felt like your last proper chance with him. It was a fresh start and you knew that if there was any real hope of you both being able to move past everything you had done to yourselves, to each other, then you had to quit from all of the bullshit, right from the start, and work from equal, level ground.

You looked back at Brian again. This time his eyes were open and he was staring at you openly.

The other kind of desire flooded through you then, as you studied him, the line of his jaw, the way one of his eyebrows raised in question. The desire to be with him, to hold him, to kiss him, and yes, to fuck him.

As if reading your mind, he leaned over and brushed his lips against yours, igniting that familiar fire that burned into your gut every time he was close by.

You opened your mouth to say something when the seatbelt sign began to flash again, and he shot you an apologetic look before settling back in his seat.

"Guess we’re not joining the Mile High Club this time, Sunshine," he said with a smirk.

The plane began to descend and you watched as the ground sped towards you.

Back in New York again. Only this time it felt a little more like home.

-*-

III. Brian

The plane taxied down the runway and came to a stop. You unbuckled your belt and sat there for a moment, staring at the back of the seat in front of you, unblinking.

"Brian?"

You glanced at Justin and nodded, finally getting out of the seat. You reached for his bag stored in the space above your seats, and waited for a break in the people leaving the plane before you walked into the aisle, Justin behind you, and made your way to the exit.

The airport was bustling with activity and you swerved around people milling about, dodging those who hurried past you, meeting their friends and family as they disembarked.

You gave Justin a tight smile, hoisting his bag over your shoulder, and lead him out towards the congregation of yellow cabs waiting to collect passengers and distribute them all over New York.

You pulled open the trunk of one, throwing his bag inside, and then joined him in the back.

"I guess we should go back to my place since you haven’t made reservations anywhere." He looked nervous, and you reached for his hand again, rubbing your thumb along the back of his knuckles in silent comfort.

"Your place is fine."

He gave directions to the driver, who seemed to be about the only cabbie in the entire area of New York City who hadn’t memorized every possible route and location.

Finally, as the cab pulled out into the road behind another, Justin sat back and relaxed against your shoulder.

"We should get you some clothes and a place to stay…" he began, and you gave him a look.

"Relax. I can sort that out later. I’ll give Mikey a call and he can arrange to get everything at the loft packed up and sent out here."

"Apartments are expensive in New York."

"I know that," you replied, rolling your eyes. "Money isn’t an issue."

He nodded again, biting his lip like he always does when he’s thinking about something carefully. "You can stay with me until you find somewhere. I’m sure Dean won’t mind, he’s hardly ever at home anyway."

Dean. Right. Daphne’s friend.

"I can find a hotel, Sunshine. It’s one thing having one fag sharing your space, but two? Especially two who like to fuck. Repeatedly. With as much noise as possible."

He gave you a look as if to say ‘you’ll be lucky’, and you grinned at him.

"Don’t worry, Sunshine, I’ll make sure you get plenty of rest in -between each session."

He smiled then, which helped a little. If you could still make him smile then everything would be okay.

Twenty minutes later the cab pulled up outside a run-down brick building, and you raised your eyebrow in Justin’s direction before getting out and handing the driver some cash.

Justin grabbed his bag from the trunk and rooted around in his pocket for his keys. "What? Expecting the Ritz were you?" he asked, as he walked past you up the steps and opened the door.

You snorted, keeping your mouth shut, and followed him inside.

The hallway was pleasant enough, if not a little drab. At least the wallpaper wasn’t peeling and there didn’t seem to be any sign of a cockroach infestation or anything else that was likely to send you straight out of the door and in the direction of the nearest hotel.

Justin led you down the corridor and up a couple of flights of stairs, finally stopping outside a door at the far end of a corridor, and unlocked it with another key.

The heavy sound of a rock beat immediately assaulted your ears, and you made a face.

Justin laughed and led you inside, kicking the door closed behind you.

"Forgotten what it’s like to be a student?" he asked.

"You’re not a student," you pointed out, with a grunt, and he rolled his eyes.

"Dean is. He’s in his final year studying classical music."

"Great. All we need is another fucking musician in our lives." Your thoughts immediately turned to Ethan, naturally, and despite Justin telling you numerous times that the guy he shared this place with was straight, you still weren’t convinced enough to feel at ease.

"Stop complaining," Justin replied, and walked through into a brightly lit kitchen, the sides cluttered with cereal boxes and beer crates.

Well, at least you weren’t going to go thirsty anytime soon.

Justin dropped his bag on the worn kitchen table and stretched a bit, glancing around as if he was re-familiarizing himself with his surroundings.

Suddenly, a hurricane swept through into the room in the guise of a thin, wiry man, an unruly mop of red hair nestled on top of his head.

"Hey, Justin!" he declared, a wide grin stretching his almost-too-large mouth. "How was the trip?"

He paused when he saw you standing there, and blinked, giving Justin another look.

"I didn’t realize we had a visitor, I would have cleaned up."

You stared back at him, trying to work out whether you could bring yourself to liking him or not.

-*-

IV. Justin

It felt good to be back. Even better because Brian was there with you. It didn’t seem to matter much anymore than you didn’t have any idea how to go about sorting it all out.

You busied yourself with the practicalities first, each of which he managed to dismiss with apparent ease.

Now, back at the small apartment you shared with Dean, he would have to deal with at least one of them, whether he liked it or not.

"Dean, this is Brian," you said, giving him a pointed look, trying to communicate that yes, it was that Brian, the Brian you somehow managed to ramble on about for hours on end every time you got drunk.

When you first arrived in New York you had tried to put everything back in Pittsburgh, including Brian, to the back of your mind, in the hope that if you didn’t think about it too much then maybe everything would be okay.

And it was, at least initially. You managed to fill the first week with familiarizing yourself with the area, and later scouting the galleries for possible places to try and get your work on display. Stupidly, it had led you into a false sense of security, and the first time Dean came home with a bottle of whisky for you to share, you found yourself drunk, weepy, and spilling your guts in a condensed version of your life up until that point.

But despite all that, despite Dean knowing about you and Brian, it had all seemed so very far away, a distant part of your past that had very little to do with your present situation.

Of course, that was all changing now, with Brian standing in the middle of your kitchen in his Armani pants and Prada shirt, looking completely out of place.

"Hey, I’m Dean."

You breathed a sigh of relief when Brian stepped forward and offered his hand. "Brian Kinney."

Dean smiled and shook it, giving you a ‘what the hell happened?’ look, and began to make some coffee.

"Is it okay if Brian stays here a while until he can find his own apartment?" you asked, figuring you may as well get it over with and out in the open as soon as you possibly could.

You knew Dean didn’t have any issues with your sexuality, he had explicitly stated as much when you had discussed ground rules when you had first moved in, and he had always tolerated the few random tricks you sometimes stumbled home with after a night out at one of the clubs.

But Brian was right, there was a difference between something like that and having to watch a couple living in your house, under your feet day in and day out. Even if he wasn’t likely to find you both snuggled up on the couch watching ‘Pretty Woman’ or some other romance.

"I guess so," Dean replied, glancing up as he poured the coffee into three mugs. "Fuck knows where he will sleep though. I guess there’s always the couch."

Brian was about to say something when you jumped in. "He’ll sleep in my room," you said. "Unless there is some problem…"

"No problem," Dean said, shrugging. "Whether you think you can fit two people in there may be though."

"I’m sure we will manage, right, Sunshine?" Brian said, almost too cheerfully, a huge grin on his face.

"Sunshine?" Dean laughed. "That’s a new one."

"He was christened by the resident fag-hag back in Pittsburgh," Brian explained, accepting one of the mugs from Dean. "She sort of made herself his surrogate Mom."

"And yours," you pointed out quickly.

"And mine," he conceded, giving you’re a lopsided smile.

He was starting to look like he was actually enjoying himself.

"Oh really?" Dean asked, taking a seat at the table. "I bet she has a few juicy tales to spill about Justin."

"I have a few of those myself," Brian replied, giving you a sly look, and slipped into the chair opposite him.

You groaned. Five minutes back in the apartment and already Brian was well on his way to giving away all of your most embarrassing secrets.

You were well and truly fucked, you decided, as you picked up your mug and reluctantly joined them at the table. And not in the positive, life-affirming way either.

-*-

V. Brian

If you were honest about these things, and really, you weren’t, then you would admit that you felt completely in over your head.

The feeling had started off small, just floating around the edges of your awareness, like a fly that wouldn’t go away, no matter how much you tried to swat at it. You were almost inclined to blame Justin for planting the feeling in your head in the first place, what with his insistence of bringing up your lack of clothes, place to stay; your lack of well…everything.

It had only gotten worse when you entered Justin’s apartment and stood there in the middle of the kitchen, surrounded by the daily trappings of the life he had created for himself, alone, without you.

It was an odd feeling, partly made up of the familiar. You recognized signs of Justin everywhere, the kind that all at once endeared you and frustrated you beyond belief when he was living with you at the loft. There was the cereal he liked to eat, the Powerpuff Girls mug with the chip in the rim that he insisted on keeping hold of nonetheless, just because Molly had bought it for him one Christmas.

And there were the paintings, of course, always the god damn paintings. There was only one on the kitchen wall, but you didn’t need to see any of the others he kept around to realize how far he had come since he had moved out to New York, how his talent had taken on an edge of maturity, awareness of who he was growing into infused in every brush stroke and whirl of color.

And then of the course there was the guy he lived with -David, Dean?- who produced so many conflicting emotions in you that you could barely sort them out from one another.

You noticed the little looks that passed between them, and you were all at once relieved that Justin had someone that he could talk to, and jealous because this energetic whirlwind of a guy shared a part of Justin’s life that you hadn’t really been aware of up until then.

If you were somebody else you may have interpreted it as possessiveness, but you had never been the type to try and tie Justin down to you, making him rely on you to meet all of his needs at the detriment of forming relationships with anybody else.

It wasn’t that at all. It was something that felt too close to regret for comfort; regret that you had willingly let him walk away and willingly, to the point of insistence, kept away from him, refusing to call or visit, or pretty much have anything to do with him, anything that would remind you of what you had shared and what you had let slip away.

You felt relegated to the sidelines too, no longer the central focal point of Justin’s life. You were an intruder on this new life of his, looking in from the peripheral edges, hoping that if you stayed long enough then he would let you back in.

That there would still be a space that could only fit your shape, like one of those pointless toys Gus had - a little box with different shaped holes cut into the top, with a set of matching blocks that could only fit into their respective places and no other.

You felt a little old, also, a feeling that had never managed to sit well with you, no matter how unfounded. His house, his lifestyle, his friend, they were all so explicitly created around the student ideal, something you had pushed into the past a long time ago.

So you had covered it up with bravado, sitting opposite Dean at the scratched kitchen table, and tried to make the first connection, using Justin as the link, and proceeded to tell him all about the time Justin had been crowned King of Babylon.

It was a bittersweet memory for you, but you left out the part about how the night ended with him taking a trick from right under your nose, and fucked him in the backroom in a way you had never allowed him to fuck you, but were perfectly aware of never thinking twice about doing the same to him.

And it seemed to work out okay, with Justin allowing himself to laugh as you both teased him, his friend promising to make him try out for a similar achievement at one of the local clubs Justin had seemingly made himself familiar with during his absence.

You excused yourself after your second coffee refill, and found your way into the bathroom, leaving Justin to answer any questions Dean was obviously dying to ask.

To be blunt, the bathroom was a mess. For a start, the shower was too small to fuck in -there was barely enough room for one person, never mind two- and you began opening cabinet doors, looking for something resembling a decent bar of soap.

You came across Justin’s allergy medication sitting in one of the cabinets, trying to look inconspicuous, and you smiled, in spite of yourself. It was something so small, so stupid, and certainly nothing you would ever admit to, but just seeing it sitting there made you think that it really would be okay. After all, you had taken the plunge, your deliberate, if not somewhat hasty, actions telling him that despite everything, the crux of the matter was that you needed him.

The only thing left to wonder was whether he still needed you too.

-*-

VI. Justin

"Do you really have any idea what you’re doing?"

You blinked and turned back to Dean, pulling your gaze away from the direction Brian had headed, towards the bathroom.

"Excuse me?"

"Have you thought about this, Justin?" Dean sighed and toyed with a placemat. "Is this really what you want?"

You knew what he was referring to of course, but you weren’t particularly inclined to answer the question directly.

"What?"

"Justin!" Dean sounded exasperated. If there was one thing he never did, it was allow you to play your games and hide from what was staring you in the face.

Sometimes you had a hard job working out whether it was a quality you admired or not.

"Justin." His voice was softer now, but the seriousness was still there, obvious in the way he stared at you, waiting for you to reply.

"No, I haven’t thought about it. It was a last minute decision, one I had little say in." You took a sip of your coffee to try and distract yourself, making a face when you found it to be barely luke-warm. "Look, if Brian wants to move to New York, who am I to stop him? There’s no law that says he can’t be here."

"You know he is only here because of you."

"He’s always wanted to live in New York," you told him, trying to dodge around the comment. "Not long after I met him he nearly did just that, but his job offer fell through."

"I’m sure there were plenty of other chances he could have taken if he was really intent on coming here," Dean pointed out.

You frowned. You knew what he was saying was the truth, but you didn’t want to deal with it. Not now, maybe not ever.

To have that kind of responsibility over Brian, to know that you were the single reason he had left his job, his home, his family behind, it was more than overwhelming. You were only just learning how to take responsibility for your own actions, your own life, and you weren’t ready to deal with his on top of that.

You wondered if this was how Brian had felt after you were bashed, when you mother had pretty much found herself with a son so full of hatred and rage he only knew how to direct it in on himself. She didn’t know how to cope and she had shoved you into Brian’s arms, grasping onto what she considered to be her last hope, and left him to work out how to deal with it all.

And he had, in his own way. He hadn’t tried to coddle you or pretend that everything would be okay. He called you out on every game you had tried to play, not listening to any of your pathetic excuses about how you couldn’t go on, how you couldn’t deal with it all, especially without your art to pour your frustrations into.

But he hadn’t saved you, not directly. He never once was presumptuous enough to think he had that kind of control or influence over another person’s life. He had simply continued the way he always had, determined that he would do his own thing, live his own life, despite the inconvenience sitting on his couch, asleep in his bed. And through doing so he had showed you that no matter how many people flocked around you with good intentions, trying to heal you with their love, the only person who could really save you was yourself.

So you had, and in doing so you had somehow managed to become a better person, more self-assured, more Justin, that you ever had before.

You looked back at Dean, who was still sitting there, just watching you with a curious expression on his face as all those thoughts flooded through you.

"I never planned this," you told him. "I never would have suggested it, but I want him here. I’m not going to tell him to go back."

Dean nodded and opened his mouth to say something, when Brian spoke up.

"I should think not, Sunshine. I don’t like wasted journeys."

You looked up sharply to find him leaning against the doorframe, his arms crossed over his chest, a smirk on his face.

"How long have you been standing there?" you asked him.

"Long enough, Sunshine," he replied, with a tiny smile. "Long enough."

-*-

VII. Brian

You hadn’t meant to overhear what Justin was saying, but as soon as you stepped out of the bathroom and the muffled sounds of his voice filtered through into the hallway, you couldn’t help but move towards the kitchen.

You didn’t exactly creep up on them, you would never allow yourself to do that, but it wasn’t exactly your fault if they didn’t see you standing there, was it?

You weren’t surprised by the slight confusion that had infused Justin’s voice. It had been a momentary decision to go with him, and you hadn’t really left him with much choice, however much you would have liked to pretend you had.

But, it wasn’t like he had made any move to put up a protest either.

Your smile at his words seemed to put him at ease, and he stood up, putting his mug down in the sink.

"Want to go out somewhere?" he asked, and you shrugged.

"Sure, may as well show me the sights."

Justin glanced at Dean and something else unspoken passed between them. Dean smiled and stood up.

"I’ve got a theory test coming up this week…" he nodded at you on the way past, and slipped off down to hall to what was presumably his room.

You looked back at Justin, who suddenly looked a little nervous, and he crossed the floor, brushing against your arm as he passed.

"Better come see my room," he said.

You followed him out of the kitchen and into a small room opposite what you judged to be their living room, a moth-eaten old couch taking up most of the space.

"It’s small, I know," Justin said, and you turned your attention back to him. "But then, it is expensive living in New York."

You nodded and glanced around the area he called his bedroom, taking in the art prints covering the wall, surprisingly none of which were his.

Then your gaze landed on the bed.

"Fuck, Justin, it’s barely more than a single!"

He almost laughed at your horrified expression. "What did you expect? I don’t exactly need bigger than that."

You snorted and moved over towards it, pressing a hand down on the mattress, testing how firm it was.

"I’ll sleep on the floor if you like," he said, shifting his weight from foot to foot as he watched you warily. "Or even the couch."

"Don’t be stupid, Sunshine," you replied, and gave him a look.

"Yeah, maybe a hotel is a better option…"

You rolled your eyes and grabbed his arm, tugging him towards you, and flopped onto the bed, pulling him down against your chest.

"I said, don’t be stupid. This will be fine. We’ll squeeze in somehow."

He raised one eyebrow in disbelief and you hid a smile, pushing up the sleeve of the arm you were still holding, and placed a kiss against the inside of his wrist.

"Really, I’ll cope. Even if you have to sleep on top of me." You paused, a wicked glint in your eyes. "Especially if you have to sleep on top of me."

He snorted, his eyes still on you, and you placed another kiss against the delicate flesh, running the tip of your tongue down over one of the faint blue veins that ran just underneath the surface.

He made a tiny sound in the back of his throat, and you smiled against his wrist before moving your head and pressing a couple of kisses against his palm.

You looked up to meet his gaze and he curled his fingers in on his hand, holding onto the kisses, and you leant over, threading your fingers through his hair as you pulled him closer.

It was a lazy kiss when your lips finally met, and you took your time exploring him, reacquainting yourself with the architecture of his mouth in a way you hadn’t allowed yourself to do while he was in Pittsburgh.

It was the opposite of the night of the dance, a hello rather than a goodbye, and it was you who took the lead this time, pausing to pull his shirt off over his head before you lay him down and hovered above him, studying him intently before you dipped your head and placed a series of kisses across his collarbone and down, lower, to capture one of his nipples in your mouth.

He arched up towards you, pressing his hips against yours, his hands fisting in your hair, and you trailed your tongue down over his ribs towards his navel, your hands working on undoing his pants and freeing his erection.

You took a moment to look at him properly, your eyes roaming over his cock and up his body, watching him sprawling out, his hair fanning out across the pillow, before your bent down and nudged the head of his dick with your nose, nuzzling into him as you inhaled his scent.

His breath hitched slightly, a barely perceptible sound that anybody who didn’t know his reactions well wouldn’t have noticed.

But you did.

You tongued the slit, tasting the first drops of him, and then parted your lips, taking him into your mouth.

It became frenzied after that, a blur of sound, texture, and taste, overlaid with that heady scent that was so distinctively Justin it made your mind spin out of orbit.

He couldn’t thrust himself down into your throat hard enough, and you couldn’t suck him quick enough, a frantic race to try and bring him closer to that precipice where he would hang, suspended, completely submissive to your control. You slowed right down, drawing him out, teasing him, basking in the knowledge that at least for those few moments, the fate of his pleasure lay in your hands.

You rose up slightly, sliding your lips over his length, then sucked down hard, your tongue pressed flat against the head, and felt him tip over, his body suspended for a split-second before his climax crashed through him and he came deep into your mouth, his fingers flexing in your hair before he relaxed, his head dropping down against his pillow, his eyes tightly closed.

You pulled away from him and sat up, unable to keep the grin off your face, allowing yourself to enjoy the first real time you had done anything together for months without the desperate knowledge clawing at the back of your mind that he was going away again.

This time he was going nowhere, and you moved up his body, kissing a path up his chest then his throat, finally capturing his lips.

You were going to make sure of that.

-*-

VIII. Justin

You opened your eyes again when he moved off you and stood up, and you raised one eyebrow, reaching out a hand to pull him back down.

"Not now, Sunshine," he said, raising one eyebrow. "You said we were going out."

You were about to protest, the words sitting right there on the tip of your tongue, but something about his brush-off made you pause.

It wasn’t like Brian to refuse any sort of sexual activity, no matter what time it was, how busy you both were, or where you had to be. It alerted you to how he was feeling, how he was unsure about all of this, despite the face he was putting on, and you nodded, pushing yourself off the bed, and shed your shirt, going to the wardrobe to find another.

"This has to be the first time I have gone out in the evening wearing the same clothes I had on during the day," he mused, and you cracked a smile.

"I would lend you something of mine if I thought it would fit."

Brian snorted and glanced over at you. "No offence, Sunshine, but I don’t really go in for the twink look."

"No, I suppose not. You just fuck it."

Brian raised one eyebrow and swatted your ass. "Get a move on, brat."

You gave him a grin and grabbed his hand, pulling him from the room towards the front door.

Out on the street you hailed a taxi, and directed the driver to ‘Ethos’, one of the clubs you had become fairly well acquainted with during your stay in the Big Apple.

The place was jumping when you entered, Brian insisting on paying the entrance fee at the door, and you pushed through the crowd, making your way to the bar.

"What do you think?" you shouted over the music, as Brian joined you, and ordered a couple of drinks from the barman.

"It’s okay," he replied, sniffing. "It’s not Babylon, but I suppose it will do."

"You suppose it will do?" You laughed and swept your gaze over the writhing bodies on the dance floor. "New York is said to have some of the hottest queers on the planet."

"I’ve seen better."

You furrowed your brow as Brian took another sip of his Beam. Something was off but you couldn’t quite put your finger on it. You had every intention of trying to show him everything New York had to offer, starting with the Club.

And more specifically the backroom.

You thought that if there was one thing that would put Brian at ease it would be sex, and you imagined that as soon as he loosened up a little, the fresh new pickings would have him salivating like a wolf about to move in for the kill.

"Want to dance?" you asked, leaning closer to him so that you could shout in his ear.

He turned his eyes towards you, his expression almost blank, and shrugged. "You go ahead, Sunshine. I might join you after I’ve had another drink."

You were about to argue with him when he gave you a look, trying to impart without words that he was quite happy standing on his own for the time being, thank you very much.

You chewed on your lip and then nodded. You knew better than to try and argue with him when he was in one of his moods, it only made him more determined, and besides, for all you knew, he was trying to get rid of you so that he had a better chance of finding a trick.

You gave him a small smile and downed the rest of your drink before moving towards the dance floor, nodding at a couple of people you recognized from previous visits to the club, and found yourself a space.

You glanced back at Brian, who was now sitting with his back to the bar, studying the half-naked men moving around under the heat from the lights, and grinned.

Seemed like you could take the stud out of Liberty Avenue, but it was impossible to take Liberty Avenue out of the stud.

You closed your eyes and began moving to the music that thrummed up through your feet and into your limbs, forcing them to react to the steady beat. Perhaps this would be a lot easier than you had first thought it would, and it almost made you wish you had taken the plunge and asked him to move to New York with you when you had first had the chance.

-*-

IX. Brian

You’d never felt uneasy in a club in all the years you had spent going to them, but you supposed there was a first time for everything, and if you had thought for just one second that you would be feeling like that, you would have insisted on staying at Justin’s place.

Which would have made another first.

Back in Pittsburgh you were used to commanding attention in the clubs, and especially in Babylon, long before you even became the owner, but as you stood at the bar, watching as the dance floor heaved as one, like a swarm of bees all buzzing to the same beat, it finally dawned on you that familiarity had bred complacency.

On Liberty Avenue everyone knew who you were. Your reputation proceeded you, and that was exactly the way you liked it. It was never hard to find someone to fuck; in fact, you had never had to look because everyone else would do that for you. It was practically a given that any queer worth their weight in lube had some sort of urge to fuck you.

You weren’t stupid enough to think that any of them were interested in who you were as a person, which you supposed was only fair considering you couldn’t care less what they were like either, but for the most part their interest at least stretched as far as pure, simple, carnal lust.

Of course, there were always those who weren’t particularly attracted to you, and you could always pick those out by the blank gaze in their eyes that alerted you to the fact they wanted to fuck you just so they could tell people they had. You always punished those people, riding them harder, plunging in deeper, scraping your nails across their skin and leaving little red welts as if to remind them they were god damn lucky you even so much as glanced in their direction in the first place.

Luckily, those people were few and far between. You knew how hot you were, how no matter your age you still rated highly, if not the fucking top, in the list of the most desirable men in Pittsburgh.

But here in New York, it was completely different, and you had felt it in the air as soon as you had walked in with Justin bouncing in front of you, an excited look on his face as if he was opening up a whole new world and laying it down at your feet to be fed upon.

Only trouble was, you didn’t think anybody was particularly interested.

Sure, the guys in the club wanted to fuck - queers the world over, if the stereotype had any basis in reality, always wanted to fuck. That wasn’t the problem. The issue here was that you didn’t think they wanted to fuck you.

Here, the people were different, their attitudes were different. You had been around long enough to know that wherever people congregated there was a pecking order, but unlike in the Pitts, here in New York, everyone was trying for the top, and it seemed that even if someone managed to distinguish themselves as flavor of the month, that’s exactly how long their notoriety would last for until they were consigned to the bottom of the heap.

Everyone here had their own self-interest at heart, which you supposed may have been a state of mind born through necessity of living in a city where human life was as disposable as the garbage, and to get anywhere further up the ladder than the bottom rung, a person not only had to be ruthless, not caring about how many toes they stepped on, they also had to keep on believing their own hype.

In short, everyone here was just like you, which rendered the whole personality type as pretty damn worthless.

Not only that, nearly everyone in the club sat the other side of thirty, which didn’t help matters much.

You glanced back over to where Justin was dancing with his eyes closed, completely oblivious to all of the attention he was gathering from the men around him.

Here, it was Sunshine that shone the brightest.

-*-

X. Justin

You opened your eyes when the first pair of hands lay upon you, and stared up into the face of yet another young wannabe-something, his face indistinguishable from the others around him.

You scanned over his face and down to his body, muscles in all of the right places, a slight sheen of sweat pricking his tanned skin.

He was nothing particularly special and that was something you always liked in your tricks - cookie-cutter men who melted into each other when you turned up the heat.

Once, a long time ago, you had made a point of telling yourself the people you fucked were individuals. Each of them had their own names, their own lives, their own opinions and preferences, likes and dislikes.

Of course, there was a perfectly logical reason behind that insistence, and it wasn’t entirely altruistic.

At the time, no matter how hard you tried to worm yourself into Brian’s life, and subsequently his heart, he shoved you right back out again, rolling his eyes, barely managing to stop just shy of blatantly laughing in your face. You knew why he did it, too. He saw you as a naïve little boy who had latched onto him on the basis of little more than lust, your attachment created out of some sort of romanticized notion that because he took your virginity, and thus forever cemented himself as an important fixture in your life, that he felt the same about you too.

It was all bullshit, you knew that now. You were just a kid with a huge fucking crush. For all you knew about Brian, he may as well have been a celebrity smiling down at you with false-white teeth from a poster on your wall.

There were other things there too, but at the time you didn’t see them for what they were: true glimpses of Brian Kinney, the man that lay behind the ‘fuck them and leave them’ façade.

But your body, or something else that couldn’t be verbalized, knew it all along.

It was there in the way he sat patiently and told you about his own first time, trying to reassure you in his own, strange way that you weren’t the first guy to be scared of your first fuck, and you definitely wouldn’t be the last.

It was there in the way he allowed you to tag along to the hospital when he could have kicked you out and left you to roam around the streets for the rest of the night. It was there in the look he gave you in that room full of dykes, remembering, despite his awe over his new son, that you were there.

Back then, you had also thought that his asking your opinion over Gus’s name meant something too, but that was little more than the smugness of an inexperienced seventeen year old who wanted desperately for what he saw as the epitome of everything good and queer to give him some sort of validation.

Of course, over the years, in the retelling of Gus’s naming, the meaning behind Brian’s actions had become warped, and both of you had come to view it as a fond memory of one of the first things you had shared.

But all of that was nothing more than a testament to the place you had found yourself in - a constant presence in Brian’s life.

The reality was a lot harsher, and the meaning was far from lost on you now. Brian asking your opinion hadn’t been a nice gesture he had extended towards you, and certainly not his way of trying to include you in what was a completely foreign experience. It was just a coincidence it had even come across that way, and the more you got to know Brian, you realized how common that sort of behaviour was.

Essentially, he was giving both Mel and Linds a subtle message. He was telling them that the presence of his son in his life was unwelcome, and that he didn’t want to be a proper father to him, or more accurately, he was too scared to try.

He was asking a person, whom he considered to be nothing more than a trick, to voice his view on something that was supposed to be one of the most important moments of his life, and thus rendered it insignificant in his eyes.

Thank fuck you weren’t perceptive enough back then to pick up on his message. Maybe if you had then you wouldn’t have stuck around, but all you had seen was a beautiful man holding his beautiful son, and you felt honored to be a part of that.

The funny thing was your single-minded persistence, born on the back of the crush-you-thought-was-more, forced you into spending as much time in his company as you possibly could, and consequently, without even realizing it, you fell in love with him.

And that’s when your attitude to tricking more or less changed, and it was easier all round if you kept your conquests as blank, store-window dummies.

You gasped as the guy on the dance floor ran his hands over your chest, and your nipples immediately jumped to attention, the sudden shock to your nerve endings jolting you back to reality.

You sighed and leaned forward into his attentions, subtly letting him know you were interested, and tried not to think about where you stood in regards to tricking these days.

When you’d left for New York you fucked because, quite frankly, you were a red-blooded male that needed to vent your pent-up frustrations somewhere, especially with Brian out of the picture, but now, with him back, you were pretty certain that you would have to get back into the old routine of fucking tricks, if not for your own pleasure, then for Brian’s, and because if you didn’t and he still did, the thought of it was likely to drive you crazy.

-*-

XI. Brian

You watched with a curious detachment as first one guy and then another moved into Justin’s space and started touching him, their hands moving across as much flesh as they could find, as if they were claiming him as a fucked up prize in a competition that had never been spoken about, that just was.

It all felt so horribly familiar.

Justin pressed himself back against a man who had just stepped up behind him, grinding his erection into his ass, and reached around, his hand snaking up to rest against one of the man’s thighs without so much as a glance in his direction, letting his instincts be guided by touch alone.

He opened his eyes again when a third man stepped up to him, and he shook his head. Apparently two was Sunshine’s limit, at least for that night.

He nodded once at the man in front of him, whose hands were still gliding along the plains of his chest, and slipped out from between the two of them, heading off the dance floor and to what you presumed was the direction of the back room.

You finished your drink and shook your head at the barman when he went to refill your glass, and watched as he shrugged in response and went off to serve someone else without so much as a backward glance.

You pulled yourself heavily from the stool you were sitting on, as if it was an effort to move, and waded through the crowd as you made your way in the direction Justin had gone.

Backrooms were similar the world over, but again, for some reason you couldn’t quite pin down, you felt like a man in a foreign country as you entered the gloom, tilting your head as if the men lining the walls, their faces screwed up with the onslaught of their pleasure, groaned in a language you couldn’t understand.

You scanned their shadowy forms, looking for him, and turned a corner, freezing when your eyes automatically picked him out, despite the darkness, and you leant against the wall, half-hiding yourself and half for support.

He stood against the far wall, his head thrown back against the shoulder of the man behind him who was busy thrusting into his ass. His hands were buried in the hair of the man on his knees in front of him, Justin’s dick in his mouth.

You pulled in a shaky breath. No matter how many times you saw him like that, you could never quite get used to it. His hair shone, despite the lack of light, and even here, his needs being attended to by the pair of men who seemingly got off on Justin’s pleasure more than their own, he looked innocent. If you were inclined to believe in religion, which you weren’t, you would have described him as an angel amongst devils, allowing himself to be used by the sycophants around him, as if he was possibly their only remaining salvation.

You watched as Justin thrust wantonly into the mouth in front of him, the cock behind, and thought back over all the times he had wandered into the backroom at Babylon and found you like that, in exactly the same position. The only difference was that you had never paid any regard to his feelings when you took on a trick or two, and despite the pleasure that implanted itself on his lips as he parted them and moaned, coming hard into his trick’s mouth, you suspected that he was completely aware of you the entire time.

Your suspicions were confirmed when he opened his eyes and looked straight at you, locking his gaze with yours as the man behind him tightened his grip on his hips and thrust into him a couple more times before he came.

Once he was spent, Justin pushed away the man who knelt on his knees in front of him, almost knocking him over, and pulled away from the guy behind.

He bent down and pulled up his pants, fastening them, and then moved towards you, as if in slow motion, that secret smile he kept back just for you appearing on his lips.

"Hey," he whispered, when he was close enough for you to hear him, and stepped into your arms that had seemingly risen without your say-so to lock around his back.

He nuzzled his nose into your shoulder, sharing his post-coital bliss with you instead of his tricks, and you swallowed hard, wrinkling your nose up as the scent of sex rose off him like heat.

You closed your eyes and dropped your head back against the wall, letting him lean against you, and thought back to the pre-Ethan days when you had made a game out of smelling him when he came back from tricking, trying to guess the type of man he had been with.

You had never liked it, always feeling that unreasonable surge of jealousy that flooded through you at that first sniff, despite the game being yours to begin with, the fucking insistence that you both shared yourself with other people because that was what fags did. That was what you did.

You would utilize that jealousy, internalizing it, and in some fucked up masochistic way it urged you on to take more tricks, a fragrant proof that Justin wanted it like that too, that it wasn’t just you.

But now things had changed, and the jealousy threading its way through your veins felt just like poison.

Back in Pittsburgh, the clubs were your playground, but here, Justin was the popular kid whom everyone wanted a slice of. You were the new kid who was either likely to be pushed around, or as was becoming evident here, altogether ignored.

It was completely hypocritical, you knew that, but you didn’t like it one little bit.

You would never admit to it if you were asked right out, but right then you realized what you wanted, and it wasn’t cheap orgasms at the hands of faceless tricks.

You wanted Justin. And furthermore, you wanted him all to yourself.

-*-

XII. Justin

You knew something was wrong from the way he stiffened against you and wrapped his arms around your waist, clinging on, his grip a vice, as if you were likely to slip away like mist if he didn’t hold on.

But you couldn’t quite work out what it was that was troubling him. He had turned up in the backroom, so you assumed he had tricked to some degree, even if it was little more than a blowjob, so you didn’t think it was anything as simple as you fucking the tricks instead of giving all of your attention to him.

"Want to get another drink?" you mumbled against his shoulder, and you felt him shake his head.

"No. Let’s go back to your place; I’m tired."

Maybe that was it. After all, it had been a long day and flights always managed to wear people out, however short they were. Add to that his new surroundings and what was obviously a monumental decision in leaving his life behind to re-enter yours, and no wonder he was a little tired.

You nodded and lifted your head, studying him in the half-light, and he stood there, calmly watching you back, an unreadable expression on his face.

You leant forward and pecked him on the lips, then fumbled for his hand, turning to pull him out of the backroom and back into the heaving club.

As you descended the steps to the street outside, the cool air hit you, and a tension you hadn’t realized his body had been holding immediately left him.

You hailed the first cab that came along, and bundled Brian into the backseat, feeling an inexplicable urge to protect him wash over you.

He slumped against the back of the seat as the car sped along, and took out his cell, glancing at the screen.

"Holy fuck," he muttered. "I have a dozen messages."

You managed to hide a smile. "Well, you did leave kind of suddenly," you told him. "Everyone probably wonders where the hell you are."

He nodded his agreement and punched through to his voice-mail, lifting his phone to his ear. "Mikey probably thinks I’m off somewhere drowning my sorrows in a bottle of Beam."

"Or in somebody’s ass," you replied, tilting your head curiously as he shot you a look you couldn’t quite decipher.

You watched him as he listened to the first few messages in full, then switched off his phone, sticking it back in his pocket.

"A couple from Debb, and it looks like the rest are from Mikey," he explained, when he saw your questioning look.

"You going to call him?" you asked, glancing out of the window as the driver pulled up outside your apartment building.

"In the morning," Brian replied, as you both got out of the cab, and he bent over, paying for the fare. He straightened, watching as it drove off into the distance, and then turned to look at you. "Everything can wait until the morning."

You gave him a tight smile and nodded, leading him into the building and up the stairs. Everything else could wait until the morning; he was right. Your priorities for the moment were just being with Brian and trying your best to erase the little-boy-lost look he currently wore on his face.

The apartment was quiet when you entered and you noticed the tiny glow of light from underneath Dean’s door that told you he was in his room but not yet asleep, and you kicked off your shoes, padding into the kitchen, and grabbed a couple of bottles of water from the fridge, handing one to Brian.

"I’m going to take a quick shower," you told him, watching as he sank down into one of the chairs at the table, somehow managing to look graceful even as he slumped forward, and he nodded absentmindedly.

"You going to come with me?" you asked, hoping to entice him out of the black mood he had descended into, even if it was through the use of your wet, soapy body.

He shook his head. "You go ahead, Sunshine. I’m too tired."

You stared at him for a second until he finally looked up and met your gaze, giving you a tiny smile that looked like it used up more energy than he could muster.

"Okay," you replied, a little hesitantly. "If you want something to eat then help yourself, and you know where the TV is."

He nodded slowly again and ran one hand tiredly over his face. "I’ll be fine," he said, after a couple of moments had lapsed.

You smiled and then turned, making your way towards the bathroom. You didn’t think he was fine at all but you didn’t really want to get into it on your first night together, even if for one minute you thought he would admit something was wrong to you.

Which he wouldn’t.

-*-

XIII. Brian

You could tell immediately that Justin was worried, it was there in the look on his face; he had always worn his emotions right there, in front, for everyone to see, if only they were inclined to look.

And you always were.

But you didn’t want to get into it with him, especially as you weren’t quite sure yourself. You weren’t used to feeling uneasy, and you hoped it would be only a temporary state, and thus never something that would have to be discussed.

Besides, you weren’t the type to openly lay your emotions on the line for someone else to wade through and dissect. Hell, you didn’t even like to think about them yourself.

You shoved your chair back almost violently, and stood up, scraping a hand through your hair. You had to get a grip. This wasn’t like you, and you didn’t particularly like it either.

This was supposed to be like a second chance, not just in terms of Justin, but for your life in general as well. You had always wanted to get out of the Pitts, and New York had always been at the top of the list for destinations to relocate to. It would just take a little time to adjust, that was all. It should be expected when you were suddenly thrown into a new place with new faces.

The reason you felt unhinged was because you hadn’t planned it before hand, and therefore didn’t know what to expect. At least, that’s what you told yourself. You had always been good at deceit, even if the person you were trying to fool was yourself.

You sighed and walked out of the kitchen, pausing to stick your head into the living room, where you snorted when you saw what supposedly passed as décor, then carried on into Justin’s bedroom.

You closed the door behind you and leant against it for a second. In there you could breathe, because even though you felt a little out of place, as if you were intruding on a life Justin had made just for himself, his things felt familiar, almost comforting in a strange kind of way, and you used that to ground yourself.

You pushed away from the door and shed your clothes like a skin you no longer wanted or needed, and crawled into his tiny bed, curling up on one side, as near to the edge as you possibly could.

You buried your face against his pillow and breathed in his scent, just Justin, without the added mix of eau’ d’ trick to mess up the illusion, and closed your eyes, letting yourself pretend, despite the lumpy mattress that could never possibly be something you owned, that you were back in the loft, waiting for him to finish in the bathroom, and for that split-second you allowed yourself to believe that everything was alright with the world.

You were drifting in and out of sleep when you became aware of a hand pulling back the covers and a body slipping into the bed, spooning itself around you.

You murmured appreciatively as he nuzzled up against the back of your neck, and threw one leg over your hip, his arms winding around you until you both became a tangle of limbs with no discernable beginning and no foreseeable end.

And finally, you let yourself relax, pushing into his familiar warmth, cradling you as if you were suspended in water.

No matter what else happened, for that single moment, a moment you knew could never last, everything was right in your life, because you were where you belonged, right there in Justin’s arms.

And you made a promise right there and then, to yourself, to him, that you would never let go of him again.

-*-

Epilogue.

Some people say that life is easy, as if it’s something that can be slipped on like a pair of pants and disregarded at the end of each day, but Justin doesn’t agree.

He believes that life is hard, quite possibly harder than he ever could have imagined when he made that decision to walk onto Liberty Avenue, so many years ago, and unwittingly stood under that street light.

But Justin is used to hard by now, and what’s more he isn’t afraid of it. Part of him knows that deep down, without the difficult parts, he wouldn’t notice the good.

And he certainly wouldn’t be lying in bed, wrapped around what he considers the most difficult, most frustrating, most god damn beautiful man he has ever met.

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