The One Where Ian Forgets
Pairing: Brian/Justin, Michael
Author:  yoursweater
Rating: G
Timeline: Future
Spoilers: No
Archive: Ridiculously
Summary: Michael replays the scene of Justin verses the Fiddler versus Brian versus the champagne bottle in his head, and starts laughing even harder. Written for on__impulse challenge number one.

Author's Note: I'm trying to clean out some of the stories I've had saved for too long, and this is one of the two that I'm going to post. This was written back in fucking, June or July or something. Just random, I don't even remember what inspired it now.



Brian makes fun of him for at least a week after it happens, snickering every time he sees Justin’s face and whispering to Mikey over a table at Woody’s one night. Michael doesn’t laugh at first when Brian tells him, but Justin does watch his mouth drop open as his eyes widen a couple sizes larger then usual, and then Justin starts laughing because Michael looks more like his mother in that one second then Justin has ever seen him look in the entire time the two had known each other.

“You saw the fucking fiddler?” Michael gasps, leaning over the table like Emmett at a gossip party, and Justin rolls his eyes and continues to try and concentrate on his drink. The one lone ice cube floating around and knocking into the sides of the cheap manufactured glass. “Where was he?”

“It doesn’t even matter where he was.” Brian grins, suddenly cutting into the conversation. Michael looks over at his friend and then back at Justin, his eyebrows raised right into his hairline, and Justin can only manage a frown. “It was his,” Brian jerks a thumb towards where Justin is sitting. “Fucking reaction!”

“What?” Michael asks, his eyebrows turning from surprised to suspicious. “What did you do?”

Justin opens his mouth, ready to deny that the entire incident ever happened, when Brian butts into the conversation again, and his voice is that mix of bordering happy and on-the-way-to-being-drunk.

“We were walking down Liberty Avenue and fucking, Ian, right?” Brian glances across the table for name confirmation, so Justin nods and continues to look miserable. Mikey is more engrossed in this then he has been in anything for a ridiculously long time. Not including sex, and comics. Maybe or maybe not in that order. “He comes down the street, but his fiddle is fucking, absent. He was holding an empty champagne bottle instead.”

“A champagne bottle?” Michael asks, just for clarification purposes. Brian nods and is about to continue his story when he suddenly breaks into a second round of laughter, half drowning it in his beer as he takes another gulp. Justin sighs and leans one pointed elbow against the table, and figures that maybe if he tells Michael the story himself, it won’t be as dramatic as Brian’s upcoming version.

“I don’t know why either, he was just holding it.” Justin shrugs, brushing off his exes apparent lack of mainstream sanity as Michael nods sagely, like he understands why Ethan would be carrying an empty champagne bottle down Liberty Avenue. “I noticed him before Brian did though, he was too busy queening out about-“

“Fuck you.” Brian interjects from behind his drink, and he sounds suspiciously sober all of a sudden. “You’re the one who asked about that campaign, I merely let you know how it was going at the time.”

“You were queening out over it, Brian. You put bizarre spins on anything you can.” Justin clarifies, barely glancing over at where Brian is rolling his eyes and then shaking his head in a definite ‘no’ at Mikey. “Anyway,” Justin turns around properly. “So we see him walking towards us. And at first I didn’t really notice that it was him right, because he has his hair a lot shorter then it was when we…” Justin trails off and looks thoughtful for a minute, trying to make sure he selects the right words. Brian coughs on something no doubt stuck in his throat, and Michael’s confusion is starting to lean towards being amused. “When we were together.”

Brian snorts. Loudly. Justin merely glances over at him and then back to Michael, who is desperately trying to hide a snicker in the palm of his hand.

“Well? Did he say anything to you?” Michael finally pries, and Brian almost chokes on his beer as he starts laughing again. It’s when Justin’s cheeks flush a light shade of pink that Michael starts to border on a level of intrigue that usually only Debbie rides.

“The fiddler didn’t even remember who he was!” Brian eventually explains through laughter, and sets his beer bottle down on the table. Dramatically. A group of queens sitting at the table next to theirs turn around to see what’s going on, all plucked eyebrows raised and strong cheekbones defined. Brian ignores them and continues. “After all the bullshit he fed him, and all the rapture Sunshine claimed he was in, the Fiddler didn’t even remember who he was!”

Justin’s cheeks turn a darker pink and border on red when Michael’s mouth drops open for the second – okay, third – time that night. He looks between the two, first at Brian’s hiccupping laughter and then at Justin’s obvious embarrassment, and he’s kind of stuck between the two polar opposite emotions, but he’s definitely closer to laughing.

“Well. In all fairness, it has been three years.” Michael says, but then he realizes that he’s not helping and Brian’s just laughing even more, so he tries a different approach as Justin continues to grow more flustered at the situation. “So? What did you do?”

“I…” Justin trails off and finally just buries his head in his hands, succumbing to utter embarrassment and what Mikey anticipates is maybe just a little bit of shame.

Brian – always the hero and the one to save the day – immediately continues the aborted confession, so Michael takes his eyes off the blond and turns to the blond’s… thing, instead. He looks completely jubilant and raises his beer in a silent salute before he says anything else.

“So Justin gets pissed off,” Brian begins, his eyebrows raising in the way they usually do when he’s legitimately grinning. “And Ian’s just standing there with his empty champagne bottle, and he’s looking at me. Obviously he wanted to fuck me, but fuck no. Then Justin goes,” He raises his voice a few octaves so he sounds more like Jennifer Taylor then Justin. “’Don’t you remember the fucking herb sauce I made you that one night?’ And, for the record,” He looks over at Justin, who is a foot away from disappearing to hide under the table. “I don’t even want to know what the significance behind that is.” Brian looks back over to Mikey and with his pointer finger, Justin covers the one inch of his forehead that isn’t already hidden by his hands. “And Ian just looks at him like Justin’s the craziest little shit on the planet and then says it was nice to meet me, and walks away.”

Michael’s laughing when Brian finishes, but he still looks slightly dubious.

“You’re shitting me.” Michael finally concludes, looking over the table. But, he knows Justin isn’t that good of an actor, and Brian never laughs this hard at anything ever – except for other people’s misfortunes. “Maybe he purposely did it so, I don’t know. The guy plays a violin on a street corner in Pittsburgh and he expects to be a millionaire, how do you really know where his head’s at?”

That starts another bout of laughter from Brian and this time Michael joins in, enjoying Justin’s weird daytime encounters with assorted folk, and he’s starting to fucking giggle when Brian leans over with a grin on his face and wraps one long arm around Justin’s shoulders.

“Don’t worry, Sunshine.” He snickers, mouth dangerously close to Justin’s ear. The blond peeks out at Michael from between his thumb and pointer finger, but Michael just plays the scene of Justin versus the Fiddler versus Brian versus the champagne bottle in his head and starts laughing even harder. “If I – God forbid, of course – cheated on you with another man, and then you left me, I wouldn’t completely forget about you for at least… three and a half months.”

Justin manages a smirk and lowers one hand from his face so he can elbow Brian in the side.

“Yeah right. You’d be in deep shit trouble if I left for any longer than four days.” Justin says, snickering. “Justin, where are my fucking seven hundred dollar socks? Justin, get me some juice, I’m going to be fucking late.”

Brian pulls away and scoffs, immediately frowning across the table to where Mikey is sitting and raising his eyebrows in the usual ‘I always suspected Brian Kinney to be human, after all’ gesture. Justin laughs and over the next hour the blush on his cheeks fades as Michael complains about a damaged delivery of comic books and Brian just complains in general. It isn’t until Emmett and Ted arrive that he remembers the conversation even happened at all.

In fact, the two are barely even in their seats before Michael is starting with, “You two are never going to believe what just happened…”, and Brian is laughing again.