The Ten Pairing: Brian/Justin Author:  yoursweater Fandom: Queer as Folk Rating: G Timeline: Future Archive: Ridiculously Summary: Justin’s ten year high school reunion ends up falling on a Friday night. He sits on the marigold yellow couch in the living room. Inhales the warm air through his nose and exhales through his mouth, feels like he’s seventeen again and nervous, debating going to Babylon just to find Brian and ask him about the prom. Author’s Note: This happened by complete accident, but when I got the idea it wouldn’t leave me alone, so I had to finish writing it. Contains vague spoilers for 513, so don’t read if you still haven’t seen the finale. Let me know what you think of this one, and enjoy. Justin’s ten year high school reunion ends up falling on a Friday night – or so the invitation reads. It sits, untouched, in the front hall of their house for two weeks before Brian brings it up. When he finally does, it’s executed carefully. Brian isn’t exactly the type of person to ever consider walking on glass for certain situations per say, but if there were ever a shattered pane to sink his feet into, it’s presented when he slides the topic into a conversation that includes the ever popular topic of the next Collector’s Edition of Rage, and how the new cook at Foody Goody makes the noodles too greasy with what Brian suspects is also way too much MSG. “I’m not going.” Is what Justin says. Shakes his head, and stands up from the table. There’s this half a second long snap-click-flash for Brian, and it’s back to Pride of all fucking things. He sees an eighteen year old version of Justin standing in front of him, saying the same thing with an all too familiar wounded expression on his face. Justin hasn’t been wounded for a long time. They get into a full blown argument by the next night, just because Brian tells him that he should go, just to show all of the breeder assholes that he’s fine, he’s still fine and they’re still losing because Justin’s fucking fantastic, never been better. Justin throws a moderately expensive vase from across the room, and Brian sits in the backyard all night and smokes an entire pack of cigarettes. When he comes back into the house smelling like nicotine and anger, Justin bitches him out for that too. Tells him that if he doesn’t stop, he’s going to get cancer of the fucking brain because of all the chemicals that he still inhales. Brian makes a return with a sarcastic remark and then sleeps on the couch for the night, tossing and turning until it’s five thirty in the morning, and in-between bouts of silent complaining, there’s a low muttering that drifts through the lower level of the house – something about how he knew he should’ve spent the extra five thousand for a matching leather recliner. It’s only a mere two days later when Brian gets a voicemail while he’s in the middle of a meeting on 5th Avenue. Typical daily routine, lunch with some asshole who wants a better image for the ugly musician he’s marketing, and the way that Justin still sounds completely aggravated makes Brian cover a snort with a cough as he listens to the blond snap, “I got a hold of Cynthia before lunch, and she’s going to book a flight for Thursday morning. Believe it or not, some asshole told Michael about a certain event of which I shall not name, who then told Debbie, who proceeded to phone me just to ream me out and then offer her foldout couch for the night. Brian, I swear to fucking God. If I kill a sixty year old woman, I won’t have any regrets.” They’re at Pittsburgh International Airport by noon Thursday, both of them more than slightly disoriented just because it’s a lot harder to find a taxi in the Pitts than it is in New York – go figure. In the end, Brian gets pissed off and phones Ted’s assistant at Kinnetik, gets her to send over one of the company cars to pick them up, and only gets into a minor argument when she lets it slip that the Coupes Brian remembers approving months ago haven’t been put into rotation yet – just because the logos on the back fucking windows haven’t been finalized. Justin stands on the sidewalk outside the airport terminal and shifts from foot to foot. Fingers the handle of the piece of walk on luggage he’s still holding as Brian silently fumes beside him, ends up breaking his line of quiet muttering with an outraged, “If those assholes come with a Volvo, I’m not getting in it!” Justin decides that nothing ever changes in Pittsburgh, in a freakish land of no time way. Debbie’s house is still covered in leftover seventies burnt oranges and golden yellows, and the only thing that Justin knows for sure is different is the dishtowel thrown over the rack on the oven door. She still breaks exactly two of Brian’s ribs and crushes Justin’s body in general when she gives each of them a hug, and in-between Brian’s threats of leaving for a two thousand dollar a night hotel and Debbie’s offer for some freshly baked cherry pie, Justin sits on the marigold yellow couch in the living room. Inhales the warm air through his nose and exhales through his mouth, feels like he’s seventeen again and nervous, debating going to Babylon just to find Brian and ask him about the prom. After that, the afternoon ends up going by pretty quickly. Brian disappears to inspect Kinnetik, Michael comes over – even if he was just in New York with Hunter only three weeks previous for an exclusive screening of Rage: The Prequel – and drives Justin crazy because he’s morphed into the male version of Debbie over the last five years, and Justin can’t escape his nattering until he has to answer his cell phone, which is vibrating it’s way across the faded green counter. Ted immediately begins to beg Justin to either send him a shotgun or send ‘Bri’ back out of state. By the time Debbie’s starting to set plates full of garlic chicken and rice around the kitchen table, Justin’s ready to commit a slow suicide. He wonders If the reunion would be a dramatic enough setting to do it in, a nice backdrop to the final moments of his life. “Man. I just can’t believe you’re actually going.” Michael breathes, in-between picking over his chicken (somehow, turning forty was harder on Michael than it was on Brian) and swallowing mouthfuls of water. “I mean, Christ. You were almost killed. Why would you want to relive that?” “Thank you, Michael. I believe we all remember.” Brian snaps, and the smile on his face is forced as Justin reaches for another piece of bread, adds it to the side of his plate. Michael shrugs and starts to add something else, but the glare on Debbie’s face and the uncomfortable expression on Ben’s stops him. After dinner, Debbie gets some extra blankets out of the hall closet and then proceeds to start an in-depth explanation about how Michael’s bedroom took the brunt of her redecorating phase a few years ago. Apparently it’s now primarily used as a sewing room, even if it doesn’t contain anything to do with the hobby – with the exception of the plastic bag full of yarn samples that sit in-between the life sized terrier sculpture and knock off painting of Mona Lisa, of course. When she gives them her official tour, Brian almost has two consecutive heart attacks when he sees the fake plastic rosebuds glue-gunned in lines down the wall. So nightmares consisting of hideous crafts aside, they miraculously sleep on the pull-out sofa bed that night. Brian bounces back and forth between complaining about the fact that they’re sleeping on Debbie’s sofa in the first place, and the fact that they can’t properly fuck because of it. And for one second he mutters about how the metal bars and uneven springs hurt his back, but that complaint is quickly silenced when Justin cracks an old man joke. All of Friday morning, Justin wanders around the floor level of Deb’s house to an aggravating extent while pretending not to hear Deb and Detective Horvath fucking upstairs. Brian rolls out of bed and shuffles to the bathroom, and when he proceeds to shuffle back not ten minutes later, the bed is already folded back up and Justin’s completely dressed and making coffee at the kitchen counter. Brian shakes his head, blinks a few times, and then disappears upstairs to seek refuge in the shower. There’s a moment in the middle of the afternoon where Justin decides to just fuck it and go back home instead – because honestly, he doesn’t really care what his ex-classmates think about him anymore. There’s no way that at least half of them haven’t already seen the interview he and Michael did on Larry King when he had the Rage special anyway, and if they really wanted to know why that Taylor kid was always so quiet through homeroom, he had given his life story then. Fuck, not to mention that the portion of business graduates would know that he’s the one that’s living with one of the greatest success stories to come out of the Pitts, fag or not. But then he blinks and remembers the bat and the gimp hand and every year that’s followed since.  … Brian gets his fucking Coupe – sans the Kinnetik logo – after he bitches Theodore out for exactly eight and a half minutes. While Jennifer’s in the middle of nattering to Justin on the phone from her vacation in Malibu or wherever the fuck retired women her age go for vacation, Brian gets dressed in his most expensive and fabulous attire, and in the process, somehow gets himself wrapped up in Deb’s bright pink and blue shower curtain. The entire time he injects wickedly expensive product into his hair, he eyes the ceramic owl that’s perched above the toilet on a rickety old shelf, and decides that he’s more delighted than he thought he was that they’re getting a flight back to New York first thing in the morning. They leave in a flurry of chattering from Deb and are you sure’s from Michael, who ends up stopping by a suspicious five minutes before they leave with the excuse of dropping off a casserole dish he borrowed from Deb a mere six months ago. Justin pulls Brian out the front door before he makes another Stepford Fags crack, and shoves him down the sidewalk to get him on route to the driveway. The Novotonys stand in the doorway as The TaylorKinneys pull out of the driveway, and Deb watches with careful eyes as Brian starts to explain something in a flurry of one hand dramatics and a lot of lip movement. She remembers a night that started as the complete opposite of this, and ended with a cliff hanger that none of them had expected. And it was only ten years ago. The fifteen minute drive between Debbie’s and the school is a lot shorter than Justin expected and remembered, and before he knows it, Brian’s handing the car over to a valet worker with his keys and a wicked threat that includes balls and future children. Justin hopes that the employee doesn’t sue for verbal harassment, and pretends not to notice the way Brian still gets eye-fucked by every man, and even if Brian refuses to admit it, every woman that he walks by.  … Two hours later, and the entire night has been bordering meticulous at the most. The food is disgusting and every item has a weird crust on it, everyone Justin ever remembers knowing has already popped out one or two kids, and if he has to suffer through one more phony conversation, he’s going to take a punch to the balls over the ‘I really love that new piece you just finished, I saw it in the arts section of the newspaper, they did a write up on you and your success. You know I always knew you were going to be big, even though I only knew you through Kelly, who knew Brad who had English with you. Brad Hamilton, you remember him?’ Brian lets the gratuitous sexual innuendoes slide into casual conversations all night, and hits on Daphne for old times sake when they bump into her outside the bathrooms. She wraps her arms around Justin and hugs him for exactly three and a half hours, then punches him in the stomach when she remembers he didn’t let her know that he was going to come. She introduces them both to her newest male conquest – and who ever thought that Daphne would end up being the female version of pre-Justin Brian Kinney – some Australian model that she met in the produce section at a grocery store. They make their way through formulated conversations and introductions to Brian Kinney, and yes Kinnetik is the company behind those cereal bars and dietary supplements that you love so much. Hobbs doesn’t even show up, and Justin hears one of his old football buddies telling another some drivel about how Hobbs’ second wife’s mother died in a car accident, and they had to fly to Vermont for the funeral. For once, Justin couldn’t care less. “Christ, who ever thought an event such as this would be so dismal. I was hoping for dramatics.” Brian says, slides one arm around Justin’s still too narrow shoulders and tips his glass of not-expensive-enough-wine towards a group of people, all talking and laughing and throwing their hands wildly into the air as they cover their mouths and reminisce memories that aren’t worth anything. “It’s fucking boring.” Justin snickers and nods, decides that the most interesting thing about the entire night is how Brian’s got his hair parted a little differently than it usually is. He ignores the way Brian never lets go of his shoulder or his elbow or his hip, and figures that if valet has the car in an underground parking lot, they’ll just walk back to Debbie’s. The fresh air wouldn’t kill him, but the memories might. “I can’t believe we skipped a night of fucking for this.” Justin sighs, putting a melodramatic spin on his voice as he leans into Brian’s side a little bit more, forces another mostly fake smile at some woman in a red dress as she passes them by. Justin only vaguely recalls her from biology class, he thinks she’s the one who refused to dissect the frog – the token humanitarian at only sixteen. “How little you know. The night’s still young.” Justin smiles and reaches up, wraps his arm around Brian’s neck, and he has to push himself up on the very tips of his toes to properly do it, but he manages to snicker, “It’s the only thing that is.” In-between a remark that is all too familiar about a certain upcoming three-oh and how Sunshine’s ass will never fail or succumb to gravity, Brian grabs the side of Justin’s jaw in his finger tips and slides his tongue into his mouth. Pretends that the people standing and gaping with their mouths wide open aren’t still there, all these fucking years later.  … They get back to New York the next day, and both decide that the entire ordeal was tedious at best. And it was tedious – Brian had expected more bats, and Justin had been afraid that it was exactly what would happen. But he only had to awkwardly side-step the question once, because it turns out that getting moderately famous outdoes a being victim to a hate crime. And there was only one flashback to the night that started it all but finished it too, but by then they were already on the sidewalk outside. All Justin had to do was send one glance at Brian before he stopped complaining about the shit parking job that valet did, and wrapped Justin up in his arms instead. “I told you that you were being a drama princess.” Brian says, after completely queening out about the cricks in his back, no thanks to sleeping an entire two nights on Deb’s decrepit fold out mattress. He picks his cup of coffee up from the counter, and Justin rolls his eyes. Continues to shuffle through the gargantuan pile of mail that he passed up on the day before. Maybe he’ll start worrying about his twenty year high school reunion ten years too early, and fantasize about the day where he kicks in the double doors of the old hellhole and stands on the wobbly tables in the library. Points his fingers at the prom kings and drama queens and gives his final fuck you. He snickers a little at the thought – the King of Babylon back for his revenge, it’s what cheesy teen dramedies are made of. Brian raises his eyebrows from his position across the kitchen, but he doesn’t bother asking why Justin looks like he just finished pulling off the heist of the century.