Before
He should be studying. Daphne's coming round in thirty minutes and he's supposed to be ready. But it doesn't matter, because she's his best friend and she'll understand. It's not like they've talked about anything else since it happened.
'He was right there. Like the face of God...'
He turns automatically, as he usually does, to his sketch pad. His fingers find a pencil without looking and he starts to sketch almost dreamily, with unfocused eyes. Long, tanned, legs and a slim torso, brown hair that artfully flops over one eye. Dark eyes and a mouth finely carved from stone.
A door slams downstairs and he doesn't hear.
'Like the face of God...'
'Justin, are you up here? You'd better have read that poem because I know I can't understand it.'
'...face of God...'
The cheekbones are lines of glass and the jaw defined as a line. Not smiling, too beautiful for that. Regal, with a hand crossing the chest and grasping his own smoothly muscled shoulder.
'And his name is Brain Kinney.'
'Justin?'
Daphne bounces into the room and drops her bag on his bed. Before he can do more than look up, she's peering over his shoulder and emitting a shriek of laughter.
'Good thing I wasn't late, I'd probably have interrupted something, right?'
'Daph!'
'Do you love him?'
'...yeah, I love him.'