Entry #02 - "Blank Canvas" (2 of 3)
Title: Blank Canvas, part 2
Written By: ayesakara
Timeline: Post Season 5
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: None
Genre: Angst, romance
Blank Canvas, part 2
As time passes, however, you find that while you are away, Pittsburgh has been transforming into a place that isn’t as familiar as it once used to be.
Your second year in New York, your mother meets a lawyer from Chicago and they get married. He has a big practice going where he lives and asks her to move to Chicago with him. She agrees. When you ask her, she says it’s because Molly’s soon going out of state to boarding school and with you being in New York, there isn’t enough incentive for her to stay in Pittsburgh. You’re happy for her. Tucker had been history for a while and while you had learned to tolerate him in the last couple of years, this guy seems much more appropriate to you.
With her no longer in Pittsburgh, you find going back home a little strange with every visit. It’s still home to you, it’s still the place you lived in, with all the memories of growing up and becoming a man there. Meeting Brian and falling in love with him. You realize that going to Pittsburgh just for Brian should be enough reason for it to be okay, you know, but as it turns out, you see him more often in New York than in the Pitts.
You suspect Pittsburgh has become a strange place for him as well.
With you now in New York and with Gus in Toronto, it seems the only thing keeping him there is Kinnetik.
You can see his rationale behind the race to acquire accounts all over the States, with a clear focus on the New York clientele. Kinnetik has good standing in the Pitts and Brian is a genius when it comes to innovative campaigns. Your foray into advertising may have been brief but you understand competition. You understand that like any other profession, in the cutthroat world of Advertising too, if you really want to win, you have to be willing to come with something unique, something that contains that extra oomph that would attract the customer.
Brian has that oomph. He understands what sells and he understands what he’s competing against. You can’t be happier to know that his focus is New York, the place where you are. The truth of the matter is: Brian always wanted to move to New York. Ever since you’ve known him. He tried before when he got the offer from that place in Manhattan but for whatever reason, it didn’t work out. Now he’s got his own successful firm, which means this time, he’s the one calling the shots.
The recent run of high profile meetings he’s had with big clients is evidence enough that he’s moving in the right direction.
Everyone knows Brian Kinney in charge is a very sexy creature.
*********
As it so happens, you have enough pieces done by July that you show them to not one but four gallery owners to pique their interest and get your lucky break when two of them give you spots for five and eight paintings respectively. One of them is the woman who owns the gallery on 23rd Street. Thus, you are booked for two shows at two different galleries during the same week.
Brian comes to both shows, of course, and so do your mother with the lawyer hubby from Chicago. From the Pittsburgh crowd, Emmett shows up with his latest sweetheart, but the rest of them can’t get away on time. You get long congratulatory phone calls from them, though, and that is enough for now. Lindsay has flowers delivered from Toronto with apologies on not making it but you tell her you understand. It’s hard to get away when you have kids to consider.
Both shows are very successful and six of your paintings are sold. You even get a few mentions in the local art rags.
Brian says the New York art scene that had been in hibernation since your exodus from the Pitts has finally woken up.
You tell him it’s only the beginning and you can hear his smile on the phone when he says he knows that.
He says your days of catching the small fry are over. You’re hunting the big game now.
*********
In retrospect, you’re not surprised to find that tricking is not the bogeyman it once was.
In the past, you always thought you were not into tricking as much as Brian was. Everyone kept telling you how hard it must be to make this thing work with Brian since he was so difficult to deal with, so opposite to you in temperament. Everyone -Michael, Deb, Lindsay- kept repeating the age-old mantra that Brian was anti-relationship, that he didn’t do boyfriends, that he was fucked up beyond comprehension. They said it for so long and so often, and with such persistence, that a time came when, like a fool, you actually started to believe it.
You stopped considering the significance of how far Brian had come with you, and started looking for things that didn’t mean anything. You started looking for proof when the evidence was laid out right before you, in plain sight. In every action he took, in every step he chose, Brian showed you that he was bound to you. But you were too busy listening to other people’s denunciations to pay attention.
It didn’t help that, at the time, you seemed to make as much noise about commitment and monogamy as Brian did about orgies and fucking. Neither of you helped the cause by being so completely contrary to the other’s ideals.
It took Babylon blowing up and Brian bending himself backwards to prove his love for you to realize that you always had the biggest parts of him and that you didn’t need for him to abandon everything that made him the man he was to know that he loved you.
You know better now. You know that words don’t mean shit if they’re not followed by actions. Brian has always given you actions.
He tells you there are to be no rules this time.
He knows you love him. Plus, as you had so accurately predicted when you left for New York, that despite the distance, you do see each other all the time. What else could either of you possibly want? If you want to fuck someone more than once or exchange numbers, it is your discretion. As long as your heart is with him, that is all that matters.
You agree with him and tell him the same stands true for himself as well. You know this, though: You will not kiss anyone on the lips. That is one rule you broke one too many times in the past and don’t plan on breaking ever again. Of course, you suspect he still doesn’t fuck anyone more than once. Or exchange numbers. You also haven’t tasted anyone else on his lips since the night you enacted the rules on both of you. And then went around breaking each and everyone of them.
But you don’t want to think of what went wrong in the past now. You know you’ve made mistakes before and so has he. The trick is not the make the same mistakes again.
As you spend a couple hours everyday helping out at the murals in Crown Heights, and then each night working on your own paintings for the next show, you realize you may have grown up just a bit since you left Pittsburgh.
Pittsburgh isn’t the only place that has been transforming since you left.
You’ve all grown up in the last few years.
*********
The summer show sales give you enough money to bid farewell to Alphonse’s dump and move to a better place in the Village.
You don’t bid farewell to Alphonse, though. At some point in time during the last two years, his eccentricities stopped getting on your nerves and you actually started getting along with him. It’s good to have a friend in Crown Height to meet up with when you come to work on the murals now.
In January, just after the Christmas holidays, Brian spends two weeks in New York, giving presentations to three new prospective clients. He already has enough accounts in the City to warrant spending a good portion of every month here, but if there are bigger and better options to strive for, he won’t say no.
One night, as you are laying in bed with him in your new apartment, the fan above cooling the sweat on your skin after the particularly exuberant round of sex, you press closer to his back, wrapping your fingers around his biceps.
"Brian?" You mumble against his shoulder.
He’s busy playing with the cool covers, the back of his thighs rubbing against yours. "Hmm."
You link your fingers through his. "Does it gets tiring commuting from Pittsburgh to New York for business all the time?"
He pauses in his motion for a second and then continues. "It’s not tiring. It’s challenging."
You move your hand to his chest, soothing the skin over his heart with your fingers. "But it can be hectic, right? With business being so good for Kinnetik lately."
He doesn’t say anything for a few seconds. Then he shrugs. "There’s nothing left there now."
"Where?"
"The Pitts." He sounds tired. "It was always the dump. Now it’s just become unbearable."
You frown into his skin. "But it’s home. Our family is still there."
"Your family is scattered all over the place," he drawls. "Your mom is in Chicago. Your sister is away at school."
"Deb is there. Michael is there."
He pauses again and this time you feel an unfamiliar tension in his body. You knew that, for reasons still unclear to you, Brian and Michael had grown apart your last year in Pittsburgh. But you had thought all that had changed after the bomb. Michael had come and made up with Brian. Things had been getting back to where they had been in the old days when you left.
Or hadn’t they?
"What?’’ You ask softly.
"Yeah well," Brian continues in the same nonchalant drawl. "Michael has his own life, his own ... family to be with."
It suddenly occurs to you that perhaps, despite their efforts to forget the tensions from that last year for the sake of their friendship, the Brian and Mikey Show had not been able to run its full course after all. Not everything can be mended, or restored to its former condition, you imagine, if it’s not meant to be. Sometimes friendships are broken and no matter how hard you try, they can never be the same again.
Something went wrong between Brian and Michael somewhere along the way. You don’t know what it was, but you’d be damned if you were going to drag Brian back to that place in his head.
"Well, Ted and Emmett are there." You splay your hands over his heart again, trying to soothe the newly formed tension in his skin. "Your work is there. It’s still home."
He relaxes but shrugs. "It’s just a place, Justin. It’s not home."
You kiss his shoulder. "I know you miss Gus."
He pauses again and you know this time it’s because he knows it’s the truth. But he’s still Brian, still the king of denial. "He’s better off where he is."
If you were lying face to face with him, you’d grab his shoulders and shake him. But since you are lying behind him, you do the next best thing. You bite his shoulder. Hard.
"Ow." He jerks away from you, cursing. "Fucker."
You bite the shoulder again, holding his arms, locking your fingers around his muscles.
"HEY!"
"I’ll keep doing it."
"What the fuck?"
"As long as you keep up the denial."
"Fucker." He curses again but there’s no sting in his words.
"Admit it."
"You’re a little shit, you know that." He tries to push you away, or turn around so that he can face you and possibly enact revenge, but you won’t let him budge.
You mouth his shoulder this time, kissing the point where you had bitten him, your tongue lapping at the reddened skin, soothing the hurt. "You miss your son," you murmur in his ear. "I know it. The whole world knows it. You might as well admit it."
You finally feel him relax in your arms. "All right. So I miss him. But you’re wrong about one thing, Sunshine." His voice is quiet. "The whole world doesn’t know it. The whole world doesn’t even give a shit."
You think of the last time Gus came to stay with Brian. It was during last December, for five days. Brian has been to see him a couple times on weekends since then, but a couple of weekends in a year is not enough time to spend with your son. Despite all of Lindsay’s promises, Gus doesn’t get to spend nearly as much time with his father as a young boy his age ought to. It is true: Brian really does miss his son very much.
You kiss the back of Brian’s neck, trying to distract him now - feeling bad about getting him in this mood. "I give a shit."
Brian sighs, wrapping his fingers around yours. "You might be the only one."
You squeeze your hands together and kiss him on his cheek.
"My vote is a very big one."
*********
On the next Memorial Day weekend, you take a break from work and come for ten days to Pittsburgh. Lindsay and Melanie are in town with the kids for a couple of weeks and since you haven’t seen them in a while, you really want to spend some time with them.
While you’re there, you agree to spend some time working with Michael on the new issue of Rage. Gus is with Brian for the weekend and JR is with Michael and Ben. Of course, Michael doesn’t want to be parted from his daughter for even a second, so when you meet him up at the store, you find her there as well -- sitting in her high chair, as Michael feeds her from a bowl.
You watch, amused, as Michael makes baby talk with his two and a half years old. She’s now old enough to be let down on her own but Michael still treats her like a baby.
"Ever since I’ve come to Pittsburgh, I’ve been seeing fathers reuniting with their long lost children." You smile at them. "You here, Brian and Gus at the loft. Brian was helping Gus with, get this, his math homework."
"Well, good for Gussie Boy." Michael drawls, watching his daughter smile at her brother’s name. "Too bad Gussie can’t spend more time with Uncle Brian, huh?" He continues, scooping another bite of whatever it is he’s feeding her and taking the plastic spoon into her mouth, as you begin taking out the story boards you had worked on the previous night. "Well, we’ll let him spend all the time he can before he goes away to Toronto. Who knows when would be the next time that Uncle Brian would bother taking time out for Gussie again?"
You suddenly freeze in mid-action as the words slice through you. You turn to stare at Michael. He’s still busy feeding his daughter, unaware of your reaction. You put the boards down and take a deep breath.
"Brian misses him too, you know."
Michael looks up from his task for a second, throwing you a strange look before returning to the spoon. "Sure he does."
You fold your arms on your chest. "So where does the ‘Who knows when Brian would bother taking time out for his son’ come from?"
Michael scowls but doesn’t look at you. "Oh come on, Justin. You know Brian doesn’t give that much of a deal about Gus."
"What the fuck is that supposed to mean?"
"Hey!" Michael throws the spoon down and scrambles to cover his daughter’s ears. "Watch the language. I don’t care what kind of language you guys use in front of Gus, but I won’t accept the same treatment for my daughter."
"Fuck you, Michael." You snap at him, suddenly feeling out of control. "You know we don’t do that to Gus. Brian would never do that to Gus. But you obviously don’t know shit about Brian. You’re one of the people who thinks he doesn’t even give a damn about his son."
Michael’s hands are now glued to his daughter’s ears as he grits his teeth. "I know Brian better than you, mister. I know he’d rather get his dick sucked than take two weeks out of the year to go see his son."
Two weeks. Ah, now you know what this is all about. In December, right before the Christmas frenzy, while Brian was busy with four new accounts, two of them in New York and one in Chicago, Michael and Ben went to spend two weeks with Mel and Lindsay and the kids in Toronto. You suspect Mel had something to say about this to Michael and it’s obviously been brewing since then.
It is at times like these that you begin to understand Brian’s isolation from the Novotny-Bruckner household. In their perfect little world, nothing ever changes. People don’t change, situations remain stagnant. Everything stays the same.
"Michael," you speak firmly, trying to calm yourself down. "Brian has a business to run. He sees Gus as much as he can. You can’t expect him to take time out the way you or Ben can. He’s the owner of a growing company, he doesn’t get vacations whenever he wants to."
"No, but he can get time out to get a fuck break at Babylon whenever he wants to." Michael glares at you and you know it’s Melanie’s opinion being repeated - word for word.
"You know what, Michael, it doesn’t matter." You grab the storyboards and start putting them back in the folder you had taken them out from. "This is obviously not the right time to interact with you. I’ll come back once you’ve reevaluated your opinion about my boyfriend and your best friend." You finish packing your stuff. "Until then, you should just... feed your daughter."
There is barely a moment’s pause before Michael starts again. "Look, Justin, I know he proposed to you, all right?" You don’t look at him as you move towards the door, determined to ignore him. "I know he made a grand gesture with rings and all the shit you wanted from him." You don’t want to hear this, don’t want to hear about the rings that you left on that table two years back, you think, as you open the door and make a move to get out. "But just because he went through a momentary phase of insanity, doesn’t mean he was ready to commit."
You halt inside the door, standing with one foot out and one inside, your heart hammering in your chest, and then you slowly turn around to face him again.
"It was just a phase." Michael says. "I know Brian loves you but I also know he doesn’t do commitments or responsibilities. I know it, he knows it." He stares at you. "It’s time you figured it out as well."
You stare at him a long moment, hoping your face doesn’t betray the emotions brewing inside you, before turning once again to finally move out of the store.
This time you let the door close shut behind you.
*********
There is a forty-three years old mural on the corner of Bleecker Street and Seventh Avenue, painted by a Russian artist who migrated from Ukraine in the Fifties.
In the past few years, the beautiful painting has lost some of its luster due to pollution and environmental damage. Édouard Ferdinand, the Czech conservator you’ve now known for the last two years, is heading the team that plans to restore it to its previous glory. He is always happy to see you wanting to help in these projects. He says he is proud of the fact that an up and coming artist with actual work to shows in galleries is interested in this work-which he calls a thankless job. You know what he means.
You are always given flexibility in the times you can join in their efforts, since your work is always voluntary and you are not a professional conservator. Many other young artistes and art lovers do similar voluntary work on these murals and it’s during one of these days that you with meet Stan.
He is a French Canadian architecture student who’s apprenticed with some of the most accomplished painting conservators in the States.
Your gaydar pings the moment you see him. He looks up at you and smiles appreciatively, reaching out to shake hands with you, his eyes twinkling. He’s slender, around your height, and with reddish blond hair, light brown eyes and a full mouth. He’s definitely fuckable, you think, almost hearing Brian agreeing with you in your head, as you smile at him.
You find out that he’s been in the States for the last eight months, first studying in Houston, then Boston and now finally moving to New York this month. He’s staying with a gay couple whom he met in Houston and that moved to New York last month. He says he had a boyfriend in Boston but that they broke up two months back and now he vows never to fall for anyone else again. It’s better to keep things confined to fucking, he says, everything else gets too complicated.
That night, when you take Stan out to a bar in Chelsea, you tell him about Brian. He seems intrigued by the stories you have to tell about your lover, and with the fact that you have an open relationship. He can’t get over the fact that someone can have a real life boyfriend and still go around fucking other guys without having it cause trouble on the home front.
Later that night, when he’s lying naked and spread on all fours on his bed, and you’re fucking him hard and fast from behind, you hope for his own good that the notion no longer causes him any doubts.
*********
In July, you take a break from murals when you land your first solo spot on a show coming up in September.
The gallery, which is situated on 21st Street is very famous, and as you work on getting the last of the canvases ready for the opening you start feeling the pressure on your nerves. This is what it seems you’ve spent the last three years working towards. Your very own show. It could either make you or break you.
Brian, who for a change has been stuck in Pittsburgh for the past few weeks catering to a high-maintenance client, is all calm nerves and assuring words.
"You’ll do great, Sunshine. Now I want you to remember that while it’s okay to work hard," he speaks through the speakerphone, as you apply varnish on a large canvas, "it’s equally as important to keep taking frequent breaks to blow off steam."
"Yeah, steam," you grumble distractedly, selecting a large brush to start with for now. "I think I’ve got that part covered."
"Oh, I am sure you have, dear." He laughs. "One of your mural buddies, I presume."
You smile at his clowning tone, the thought of Stan’s admittance into your circle of fucks entering your mind and then leaving just as quickly, as you start mixing paints on the palette. "You can say that." You shake your head. You don’t know how he does that. Somehow he always seems to know what’s happening in your life, without even needing to be told. Must be ESP.
"Well, at least you seem to have the means to keep yourself amused at your disposal," he sighs exaggeratedly. "I, on the other hand, am absolutely ready to commit genocide. That asshole client has made life hell for me in the last ten days," he complains. "And to make it worse, he isn’t even remotely fuckable."
Brian speaks with you for a long time that night, talking to you about mundane things while you continue working on the canvas.
Apparently, hearing your voice while he’s stressed out about work is his way of blowing off steam.
*********
The gay couple that Stan lives with gets married and Stan invites you to attend the commitment ceremony.
They are medical students who studied and graduated together and are now interning at the same hospital together. You want to laugh at their idealism. Getting married at fucking twenty-four years old, in this day and age. But then you are reminded of your own ideals not too long ago, those inane and unrealistic dreams you’d harbored of being with Brian. What was it that he had called them in front of Michael: white picket fences, marriage and babies? Insane.
Watching the young couple exchange sparkling gold rings and kisses makes you wish you hadn’t come to this stupid ceremony in the first place. Everything reminds you of the time when you too had wished for this idealized version of domestic bliss, reminds you of the time when you had almost gotten that version with the man you love, and then it reminds you of the time you had walked away from it all.
You drink one too many glasses of champagne, earning yourself a good head buzz, and while everyone else is enjoying the buffet, you slip into the men’s room to clean up. You stare at your reflection, your eyes dilated with the high and your heart aching for some reason, and wish Brian were here to make it all better.
You go into the bathroom to relieve yourself and when you come out, you find Stan standing in front of mirrors, checking his hair.
"Hey man, you feeling okay?" he asks.
"Sure," you reply, moving to the sink to wash your hands.
As you’re closing the tap, you feel one of his hands on your hip and stare at his reflection in the mirror. He’s wearing a coffee shirt and navy trousers and carries the colors nicely. You look him down slowly from head to toe and he gets the message, moving forward to press against your back, his erection poking your hip from behind his clothes.
You fuck him inside one of the stalls, pressing him face first against the side wall. You grab his hips and close you eyes as you drive into him, and each time you thrust inside, you dream of chestnut hair and hazel eyes.
*********
Your first solo show in New York opens with much fanfare and is deemed an instant hit.
Brian is there opening night, ready and willing to play the part of the perfect partner. Your heart flutters to have him with you, you beautiful, successful lover, walking by each exhibit hand in hand with you.
All your friends from among the mural gang are there. Édouard. Alphonse. Stan. Brian has met almost everyone of them except Stan, but for some reason you don’t let him near Brian. You tell yourself it’s because he’s a repeat fuck, and while you can fuck anyone more than once if you wanted, you are not going to bring them to your boyfriend for introduction.
When the first night closes in what are in fact the early hours of the next morning, the two of you return to the apartment and collapse onto the bed, too tired and strung out to fuck. You just strip and snuggle closer under the covers, holding each other close.
Right before you slip into sleep, Brian tells you he has some free time coming up before Christmas and asks if you’d like to go away somewhere on a break, like Bahamas?
You murmur your assent and fall asleep with your head on his chest, dreaming of fucking Brian on a sandy beach in the Bahamas.
*********
In the last week of October, when you’re relatively free from slaving away for gallery shows, Édouard invites you to accompany his team to a restoration site at an old abandoned Church in Buenos Aires.
It’s a three-month long stint, which was started in the beginning of September by a group of Argentinean conservators, and Édouard and his team are to join them in the last four weeks, to help them wrap up the work.
You’re ecstatic as you call to tell Brian, and just as expected, he’s delighted for you. However, he tells you that Ted and Blake are tying the knot in December, so your vacation plans together will have to be adjusted accordingly. There’s no way he’s going to bear the wrath of Deb’s anger if you are not present at the ceremony, he says.
You almost want to tell him to fuck the wedding, that you want to get the hell out of there with him. But somehow you don’t think he’ll understand your reasoning at such short notice.
The whole world has gone crazy, you decide. Ted and Blake, you shake your head in amazement. They are getting married at the end of the second week of December, which was the planned time of your getaway with Brian. So now the vacation has moved to the Fifteenth, exactly a day after their wedding.
"Theodore and his twink are getting married," Brian snorts. "And we are the ones going on the honeymoon."
Your answering laugh sounds hollow to your own ears.
*********
The plane lands in Buenos Aires to pleasantly mild weather and clear skies.
Your team’s home base is a small hotel in Puerto Madero, a fast moving and busy shopping district at the heart of the city.
Édouard tells everyone to chill out and relax for a couple of days, as he plans on starting work from the coming Monday. So you and a group of friends, which includes Stan, hang out at Caminito the first night, the colorful walkway in La Boca dominated by tango dancers and artisans, before moving on to the pricey nightclubs at Puerto Madero.
The next day, you and Sheryl, one of the art students from NYU who is part of the team, spend the whole day at Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, studying the beautiful, rare works of some of the most renowned European masters from the pre-Renaissance era.
Monday morning, your team of ten is loaded onto an air-conditioned coaster and taken just outside the city, to the south, to the renovation site inside an old Spanish Church.
Édouard says the Church is more than a hundred years old and the Argentinean government has declared most of the structure a national monument, cordoning it off to public access, with efforts to preserve its architecture and to restore it to its past magnificence on the way. A portion of it, however, has been made accessible to the conservators with the blessings of the Ministry of Culture, so they can work inside on the project.
The team makes its way inside, Édouard greeting members of the Argentinean teams, as you look at the aged but not yet crumbling walls of the building - the structure reminiscent of old Spanish Colonial architecture. As you step into the foyer and look up at the wall, you suddenly stop breathing for a second, finally understanding why you are here.
The mural is not as long or sprawling as some of the walls you’d worked on in New York were, but it’s magnificently painted - the details vivid and commanding, making you realize that you’re in the presence of a masterpiece.
It’s a depiction of "the Last Supper" and you and your team are here to try and restore it back to it’s past grandeur.
You can see the team that has already been working here has completed a large portion of the preservation work. A portion of the wall that seems to have disintegrated with age, has been replaced with a lining of mortar and brick, the new surface now being smoothed and varnished by two conservators. Most of the remaining surface is covered with scratches and marks left by passing time but you don’t see anyone sandpapering the peeling paint here. This piece of art is apparently too rare to sandpaper away. Restoring it would mean using the minimum of force and the maximum of caution to preserve its original form as much as possible.
That afternoon, after unpacking your gear, you join the Spanish speaking local workers with your varnish and cleaning rags, and settle down to the job.
Time moves fast, especially with the hard work and the long hours, and you return each night to your hotel room and collapse onto your bed in exhaustion. You speak to Brian once every few days, telling him about your work and the sights you see. You can tell that his schedule has been keeping him busy too. He tells you he has a conference to attend in Los Angeles on the Tenth of December but will be back right before Ted’s reception.
"You better," you warn him. "Or Deb will have your remaining ball."
He says he has no plans to stand in the line of Deb’s fury and plans to be home in time.
"We should come here sometime," you tell him one night. "You have to see the tango dancers."
"Maybe we can go there in December," Brian suggests.
"Please, not this close," you groan. "It’s getting hot here, you know. I don’t want to see this place again for at least another... two years."
"Already sick of it," he teases. "Aren’t the guys supposed to be hot?"
"They are but I am too pooped out to fuck them." You sigh. "Besides, they all speak Spanish."
"Now that is hot!" He laughs. "Not you being pooped out, I mean. But the Spanish speaking guys."
"None of them are as hot as you are." You yawn, feeling sleep approaching you.
He tells you to go to sleep and you do.
*********
Work may be hectic enough to render going out and cruising Spanish guys every night a very cumbersome activity, but fucking Stan every other night in his hotel room is a little too convenient.
Or at least you thought so. Until one night during the third week of your stay in the city, when, after you’ve fucked Stan and are about to roll out of the bed and reach for your clothes, he turns around and starts talking to you.
"I saw your boyfriend at the opening," he begins, making you pause in mid-movement, your hand hovering above your shoes. "He is very beautiful."
You take a deep breath and pull your hand back, turning to face him. "Yes, he is."
"Very successful too." Stan looks into your eyes. "Seems very close to you. Very proud of what you’ve accomplished."
You look at him. "He is."
"As he should be." You can see he’s struggling to smile, but for some reason the effort isn’t coming through as successfully as it did in the past. "You’re a very talented man. Not many people are as special as you are."
There is something in his voice that makes you feel uneasy. As if you’re about to witness an act that was never supposed to take place. You look into his eyes. "He’s special too."
He is quiet for a moment and then he nods. "He has to be, for you to love him so much."
You stay silent and stare at him, watching his eyes blink slowly as he looks at your face. After a moment, he says,
"But don’t you think, Justin, that humans have truly a great capacity to love?"
You watch him carefully. "Of course, they do."
He moistens his lips and sits up on the bed to face you. "That they can sometimes love a lot of people without compromising their love for any one person?"
You don’t know what to say to this. Of course, you can love more than one person at a time. But you can’t be in love with more than person at a time. You suspect it is the latter that he is talking about.
"Don’t you think human heart is big enough to encompass love for more than one person?" His voice has deepened with emotion, his face flushed as he stares at you imploringly, his breath coming out in short puffs.
"There are different kinds of love, Stan." You try to explain calmly. "The one you feel for a lover cannot be duplicated for anyone else, not if you have already found your soul mate."
You are reaching for your shoe again when suddenly he throws one arm around your head and presses closer to you, tries to kiss you on the lips. You feel a moist tongue touch your lips and stiffen in response, bringing your hands up to push him back.
"Hey," you snarl, as you stand up and away from him. "I told you I didn’t kiss on the mouth."
Your anger, however, deflates at the sight of his misery. He looks so upset at your rejection that you almost feel sorry for him.
"How do you know you have found your soul mate?" he demands.
"For God’s sake, Stan." You throw your hands up in exasperation. "What the fuck happened to you? I thought you didn’t believe in falling for anyone after your last boyfriend."
He stares up at you in anguish, before blurting out. "That’s what I’d thought too."
For a second, you have to close your eyes in frustration, and then you grab your things, turn around and walk out of the room.
And that is the last time you fuck Stan.
*********
continued in part 3
Written By: ayesakara
Timeline: Post Season 5
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: None
Genre: Angst, romance
Blank Canvas, part 2
As time passes, however, you find that while you are away, Pittsburgh has been transforming into a place that isn’t as familiar as it once used to be.
Your second year in New York, your mother meets a lawyer from Chicago and they get married. He has a big practice going where he lives and asks her to move to Chicago with him. She agrees. When you ask her, she says it’s because Molly’s soon going out of state to boarding school and with you being in New York, there isn’t enough incentive for her to stay in Pittsburgh. You’re happy for her. Tucker had been history for a while and while you had learned to tolerate him in the last couple of years, this guy seems much more appropriate to you.
With her no longer in Pittsburgh, you find going back home a little strange with every visit. It’s still home to you, it’s still the place you lived in, with all the memories of growing up and becoming a man there. Meeting Brian and falling in love with him. You realize that going to Pittsburgh just for Brian should be enough reason for it to be okay, you know, but as it turns out, you see him more often in New York than in the Pitts.
You suspect Pittsburgh has become a strange place for him as well.
With you now in New York and with Gus in Toronto, it seems the only thing keeping him there is Kinnetik.
You can see his rationale behind the race to acquire accounts all over the States, with a clear focus on the New York clientele. Kinnetik has good standing in the Pitts and Brian is a genius when it comes to innovative campaigns. Your foray into advertising may have been brief but you understand competition. You understand that like any other profession, in the cutthroat world of Advertising too, if you really want to win, you have to be willing to come with something unique, something that contains that extra oomph that would attract the customer.
Brian has that oomph. He understands what sells and he understands what he’s competing against. You can’t be happier to know that his focus is New York, the place where you are. The truth of the matter is: Brian always wanted to move to New York. Ever since you’ve known him. He tried before when he got the offer from that place in Manhattan but for whatever reason, it didn’t work out. Now he’s got his own successful firm, which means this time, he’s the one calling the shots.
The recent run of high profile meetings he’s had with big clients is evidence enough that he’s moving in the right direction.
Everyone knows Brian Kinney in charge is a very sexy creature.
*********
As it so happens, you have enough pieces done by July that you show them to not one but four gallery owners to pique their interest and get your lucky break when two of them give you spots for five and eight paintings respectively. One of them is the woman who owns the gallery on 23rd Street. Thus, you are booked for two shows at two different galleries during the same week.
Brian comes to both shows, of course, and so do your mother with the lawyer hubby from Chicago. From the Pittsburgh crowd, Emmett shows up with his latest sweetheart, but the rest of them can’t get away on time. You get long congratulatory phone calls from them, though, and that is enough for now. Lindsay has flowers delivered from Toronto with apologies on not making it but you tell her you understand. It’s hard to get away when you have kids to consider.
Both shows are very successful and six of your paintings are sold. You even get a few mentions in the local art rags.
Brian says the New York art scene that had been in hibernation since your exodus from the Pitts has finally woken up.
You tell him it’s only the beginning and you can hear his smile on the phone when he says he knows that.
He says your days of catching the small fry are over. You’re hunting the big game now.
*********
In retrospect, you’re not surprised to find that tricking is not the bogeyman it once was.
In the past, you always thought you were not into tricking as much as Brian was. Everyone kept telling you how hard it must be to make this thing work with Brian since he was so difficult to deal with, so opposite to you in temperament. Everyone -Michael, Deb, Lindsay- kept repeating the age-old mantra that Brian was anti-relationship, that he didn’t do boyfriends, that he was fucked up beyond comprehension. They said it for so long and so often, and with such persistence, that a time came when, like a fool, you actually started to believe it.
You stopped considering the significance of how far Brian had come with you, and started looking for things that didn’t mean anything. You started looking for proof when the evidence was laid out right before you, in plain sight. In every action he took, in every step he chose, Brian showed you that he was bound to you. But you were too busy listening to other people’s denunciations to pay attention.
It didn’t help that, at the time, you seemed to make as much noise about commitment and monogamy as Brian did about orgies and fucking. Neither of you helped the cause by being so completely contrary to the other’s ideals.
It took Babylon blowing up and Brian bending himself backwards to prove his love for you to realize that you always had the biggest parts of him and that you didn’t need for him to abandon everything that made him the man he was to know that he loved you.
You know better now. You know that words don’t mean shit if they’re not followed by actions. Brian has always given you actions.
He tells you there are to be no rules this time.
He knows you love him. Plus, as you had so accurately predicted when you left for New York, that despite the distance, you do see each other all the time. What else could either of you possibly want? If you want to fuck someone more than once or exchange numbers, it is your discretion. As long as your heart is with him, that is all that matters.
You agree with him and tell him the same stands true for himself as well. You know this, though: You will not kiss anyone on the lips. That is one rule you broke one too many times in the past and don’t plan on breaking ever again. Of course, you suspect he still doesn’t fuck anyone more than once. Or exchange numbers. You also haven’t tasted anyone else on his lips since the night you enacted the rules on both of you. And then went around breaking each and everyone of them.
But you don’t want to think of what went wrong in the past now. You know you’ve made mistakes before and so has he. The trick is not the make the same mistakes again.
As you spend a couple hours everyday helping out at the murals in Crown Heights, and then each night working on your own paintings for the next show, you realize you may have grown up just a bit since you left Pittsburgh.
Pittsburgh isn’t the only place that has been transforming since you left.
You’ve all grown up in the last few years.
*********
The summer show sales give you enough money to bid farewell to Alphonse’s dump and move to a better place in the Village.
You don’t bid farewell to Alphonse, though. At some point in time during the last two years, his eccentricities stopped getting on your nerves and you actually started getting along with him. It’s good to have a friend in Crown Height to meet up with when you come to work on the murals now.
In January, just after the Christmas holidays, Brian spends two weeks in New York, giving presentations to three new prospective clients. He already has enough accounts in the City to warrant spending a good portion of every month here, but if there are bigger and better options to strive for, he won’t say no.
One night, as you are laying in bed with him in your new apartment, the fan above cooling the sweat on your skin after the particularly exuberant round of sex, you press closer to his back, wrapping your fingers around his biceps.
"Brian?" You mumble against his shoulder.
He’s busy playing with the cool covers, the back of his thighs rubbing against yours. "Hmm."
You link your fingers through his. "Does it gets tiring commuting from Pittsburgh to New York for business all the time?"
He pauses in his motion for a second and then continues. "It’s not tiring. It’s challenging."
You move your hand to his chest, soothing the skin over his heart with your fingers. "But it can be hectic, right? With business being so good for Kinnetik lately."
He doesn’t say anything for a few seconds. Then he shrugs. "There’s nothing left there now."
"Where?"
"The Pitts." He sounds tired. "It was always the dump. Now it’s just become unbearable."
You frown into his skin. "But it’s home. Our family is still there."
"Your family is scattered all over the place," he drawls. "Your mom is in Chicago. Your sister is away at school."
"Deb is there. Michael is there."
He pauses again and this time you feel an unfamiliar tension in his body. You knew that, for reasons still unclear to you, Brian and Michael had grown apart your last year in Pittsburgh. But you had thought all that had changed after the bomb. Michael had come and made up with Brian. Things had been getting back to where they had been in the old days when you left.
Or hadn’t they?
"What?’’ You ask softly.
"Yeah well," Brian continues in the same nonchalant drawl. "Michael has his own life, his own ... family to be with."
It suddenly occurs to you that perhaps, despite their efforts to forget the tensions from that last year for the sake of their friendship, the Brian and Mikey Show had not been able to run its full course after all. Not everything can be mended, or restored to its former condition, you imagine, if it’s not meant to be. Sometimes friendships are broken and no matter how hard you try, they can never be the same again.
Something went wrong between Brian and Michael somewhere along the way. You don’t know what it was, but you’d be damned if you were going to drag Brian back to that place in his head.
"Well, Ted and Emmett are there." You splay your hands over his heart again, trying to soothe the newly formed tension in his skin. "Your work is there. It’s still home."
He relaxes but shrugs. "It’s just a place, Justin. It’s not home."
You kiss his shoulder. "I know you miss Gus."
He pauses again and you know this time it’s because he knows it’s the truth. But he’s still Brian, still the king of denial. "He’s better off where he is."
If you were lying face to face with him, you’d grab his shoulders and shake him. But since you are lying behind him, you do the next best thing. You bite his shoulder. Hard.
"Ow." He jerks away from you, cursing. "Fucker."
You bite the shoulder again, holding his arms, locking your fingers around his muscles.
"HEY!"
"I’ll keep doing it."
"What the fuck?"
"As long as you keep up the denial."
"Fucker." He curses again but there’s no sting in his words.
"Admit it."
"You’re a little shit, you know that." He tries to push you away, or turn around so that he can face you and possibly enact revenge, but you won’t let him budge.
You mouth his shoulder this time, kissing the point where you had bitten him, your tongue lapping at the reddened skin, soothing the hurt. "You miss your son," you murmur in his ear. "I know it. The whole world knows it. You might as well admit it."
You finally feel him relax in your arms. "All right. So I miss him. But you’re wrong about one thing, Sunshine." His voice is quiet. "The whole world doesn’t know it. The whole world doesn’t even give a shit."
You think of the last time Gus came to stay with Brian. It was during last December, for five days. Brian has been to see him a couple times on weekends since then, but a couple of weekends in a year is not enough time to spend with your son. Despite all of Lindsay’s promises, Gus doesn’t get to spend nearly as much time with his father as a young boy his age ought to. It is true: Brian really does miss his son very much.
You kiss the back of Brian’s neck, trying to distract him now - feeling bad about getting him in this mood. "I give a shit."
Brian sighs, wrapping his fingers around yours. "You might be the only one."
You squeeze your hands together and kiss him on his cheek.
"My vote is a very big one."
*********
On the next Memorial Day weekend, you take a break from work and come for ten days to Pittsburgh. Lindsay and Melanie are in town with the kids for a couple of weeks and since you haven’t seen them in a while, you really want to spend some time with them.
While you’re there, you agree to spend some time working with Michael on the new issue of Rage. Gus is with Brian for the weekend and JR is with Michael and Ben. Of course, Michael doesn’t want to be parted from his daughter for even a second, so when you meet him up at the store, you find her there as well -- sitting in her high chair, as Michael feeds her from a bowl.
You watch, amused, as Michael makes baby talk with his two and a half years old. She’s now old enough to be let down on her own but Michael still treats her like a baby.
"Ever since I’ve come to Pittsburgh, I’ve been seeing fathers reuniting with their long lost children." You smile at them. "You here, Brian and Gus at the loft. Brian was helping Gus with, get this, his math homework."
"Well, good for Gussie Boy." Michael drawls, watching his daughter smile at her brother’s name. "Too bad Gussie can’t spend more time with Uncle Brian, huh?" He continues, scooping another bite of whatever it is he’s feeding her and taking the plastic spoon into her mouth, as you begin taking out the story boards you had worked on the previous night. "Well, we’ll let him spend all the time he can before he goes away to Toronto. Who knows when would be the next time that Uncle Brian would bother taking time out for Gussie again?"
You suddenly freeze in mid-action as the words slice through you. You turn to stare at Michael. He’s still busy feeding his daughter, unaware of your reaction. You put the boards down and take a deep breath.
"Brian misses him too, you know."
Michael looks up from his task for a second, throwing you a strange look before returning to the spoon. "Sure he does."
You fold your arms on your chest. "So where does the ‘Who knows when Brian would bother taking time out for his son’ come from?"
Michael scowls but doesn’t look at you. "Oh come on, Justin. You know Brian doesn’t give that much of a deal about Gus."
"What the fuck is that supposed to mean?"
"Hey!" Michael throws the spoon down and scrambles to cover his daughter’s ears. "Watch the language. I don’t care what kind of language you guys use in front of Gus, but I won’t accept the same treatment for my daughter."
"Fuck you, Michael." You snap at him, suddenly feeling out of control. "You know we don’t do that to Gus. Brian would never do that to Gus. But you obviously don’t know shit about Brian. You’re one of the people who thinks he doesn’t even give a damn about his son."
Michael’s hands are now glued to his daughter’s ears as he grits his teeth. "I know Brian better than you, mister. I know he’d rather get his dick sucked than take two weeks out of the year to go see his son."
Two weeks. Ah, now you know what this is all about. In December, right before the Christmas frenzy, while Brian was busy with four new accounts, two of them in New York and one in Chicago, Michael and Ben went to spend two weeks with Mel and Lindsay and the kids in Toronto. You suspect Mel had something to say about this to Michael and it’s obviously been brewing since then.
It is at times like these that you begin to understand Brian’s isolation from the Novotny-Bruckner household. In their perfect little world, nothing ever changes. People don’t change, situations remain stagnant. Everything stays the same.
"Michael," you speak firmly, trying to calm yourself down. "Brian has a business to run. He sees Gus as much as he can. You can’t expect him to take time out the way you or Ben can. He’s the owner of a growing company, he doesn’t get vacations whenever he wants to."
"No, but he can get time out to get a fuck break at Babylon whenever he wants to." Michael glares at you and you know it’s Melanie’s opinion being repeated - word for word.
"You know what, Michael, it doesn’t matter." You grab the storyboards and start putting them back in the folder you had taken them out from. "This is obviously not the right time to interact with you. I’ll come back once you’ve reevaluated your opinion about my boyfriend and your best friend." You finish packing your stuff. "Until then, you should just... feed your daughter."
There is barely a moment’s pause before Michael starts again. "Look, Justin, I know he proposed to you, all right?" You don’t look at him as you move towards the door, determined to ignore him. "I know he made a grand gesture with rings and all the shit you wanted from him." You don’t want to hear this, don’t want to hear about the rings that you left on that table two years back, you think, as you open the door and make a move to get out. "But just because he went through a momentary phase of insanity, doesn’t mean he was ready to commit."
You halt inside the door, standing with one foot out and one inside, your heart hammering in your chest, and then you slowly turn around to face him again.
"It was just a phase." Michael says. "I know Brian loves you but I also know he doesn’t do commitments or responsibilities. I know it, he knows it." He stares at you. "It’s time you figured it out as well."
You stare at him a long moment, hoping your face doesn’t betray the emotions brewing inside you, before turning once again to finally move out of the store.
This time you let the door close shut behind you.
*********
There is a forty-three years old mural on the corner of Bleecker Street and Seventh Avenue, painted by a Russian artist who migrated from Ukraine in the Fifties.
In the past few years, the beautiful painting has lost some of its luster due to pollution and environmental damage. Édouard Ferdinand, the Czech conservator you’ve now known for the last two years, is heading the team that plans to restore it to its previous glory. He is always happy to see you wanting to help in these projects. He says he is proud of the fact that an up and coming artist with actual work to shows in galleries is interested in this work-which he calls a thankless job. You know what he means.
You are always given flexibility in the times you can join in their efforts, since your work is always voluntary and you are not a professional conservator. Many other young artistes and art lovers do similar voluntary work on these murals and it’s during one of these days that you with meet Stan.
He is a French Canadian architecture student who’s apprenticed with some of the most accomplished painting conservators in the States.
Your gaydar pings the moment you see him. He looks up at you and smiles appreciatively, reaching out to shake hands with you, his eyes twinkling. He’s slender, around your height, and with reddish blond hair, light brown eyes and a full mouth. He’s definitely fuckable, you think, almost hearing Brian agreeing with you in your head, as you smile at him.
You find out that he’s been in the States for the last eight months, first studying in Houston, then Boston and now finally moving to New York this month. He’s staying with a gay couple whom he met in Houston and that moved to New York last month. He says he had a boyfriend in Boston but that they broke up two months back and now he vows never to fall for anyone else again. It’s better to keep things confined to fucking, he says, everything else gets too complicated.
That night, when you take Stan out to a bar in Chelsea, you tell him about Brian. He seems intrigued by the stories you have to tell about your lover, and with the fact that you have an open relationship. He can’t get over the fact that someone can have a real life boyfriend and still go around fucking other guys without having it cause trouble on the home front.
Later that night, when he’s lying naked and spread on all fours on his bed, and you’re fucking him hard and fast from behind, you hope for his own good that the notion no longer causes him any doubts.
*********
In July, you take a break from murals when you land your first solo spot on a show coming up in September.
The gallery, which is situated on 21st Street is very famous, and as you work on getting the last of the canvases ready for the opening you start feeling the pressure on your nerves. This is what it seems you’ve spent the last three years working towards. Your very own show. It could either make you or break you.
Brian, who for a change has been stuck in Pittsburgh for the past few weeks catering to a high-maintenance client, is all calm nerves and assuring words.
"You’ll do great, Sunshine. Now I want you to remember that while it’s okay to work hard," he speaks through the speakerphone, as you apply varnish on a large canvas, "it’s equally as important to keep taking frequent breaks to blow off steam."
"Yeah, steam," you grumble distractedly, selecting a large brush to start with for now. "I think I’ve got that part covered."
"Oh, I am sure you have, dear." He laughs. "One of your mural buddies, I presume."
You smile at his clowning tone, the thought of Stan’s admittance into your circle of fucks entering your mind and then leaving just as quickly, as you start mixing paints on the palette. "You can say that." You shake your head. You don’t know how he does that. Somehow he always seems to know what’s happening in your life, without even needing to be told. Must be ESP.
"Well, at least you seem to have the means to keep yourself amused at your disposal," he sighs exaggeratedly. "I, on the other hand, am absolutely ready to commit genocide. That asshole client has made life hell for me in the last ten days," he complains. "And to make it worse, he isn’t even remotely fuckable."
Brian speaks with you for a long time that night, talking to you about mundane things while you continue working on the canvas.
Apparently, hearing your voice while he’s stressed out about work is his way of blowing off steam.
*********
The gay couple that Stan lives with gets married and Stan invites you to attend the commitment ceremony.
They are medical students who studied and graduated together and are now interning at the same hospital together. You want to laugh at their idealism. Getting married at fucking twenty-four years old, in this day and age. But then you are reminded of your own ideals not too long ago, those inane and unrealistic dreams you’d harbored of being with Brian. What was it that he had called them in front of Michael: white picket fences, marriage and babies? Insane.
Watching the young couple exchange sparkling gold rings and kisses makes you wish you hadn’t come to this stupid ceremony in the first place. Everything reminds you of the time when you too had wished for this idealized version of domestic bliss, reminds you of the time when you had almost gotten that version with the man you love, and then it reminds you of the time you had walked away from it all.
You drink one too many glasses of champagne, earning yourself a good head buzz, and while everyone else is enjoying the buffet, you slip into the men’s room to clean up. You stare at your reflection, your eyes dilated with the high and your heart aching for some reason, and wish Brian were here to make it all better.
You go into the bathroom to relieve yourself and when you come out, you find Stan standing in front of mirrors, checking his hair.
"Hey man, you feeling okay?" he asks.
"Sure," you reply, moving to the sink to wash your hands.
As you’re closing the tap, you feel one of his hands on your hip and stare at his reflection in the mirror. He’s wearing a coffee shirt and navy trousers and carries the colors nicely. You look him down slowly from head to toe and he gets the message, moving forward to press against your back, his erection poking your hip from behind his clothes.
You fuck him inside one of the stalls, pressing him face first against the side wall. You grab his hips and close you eyes as you drive into him, and each time you thrust inside, you dream of chestnut hair and hazel eyes.
*********
Your first solo show in New York opens with much fanfare and is deemed an instant hit.
Brian is there opening night, ready and willing to play the part of the perfect partner. Your heart flutters to have him with you, you beautiful, successful lover, walking by each exhibit hand in hand with you.
All your friends from among the mural gang are there. Édouard. Alphonse. Stan. Brian has met almost everyone of them except Stan, but for some reason you don’t let him near Brian. You tell yourself it’s because he’s a repeat fuck, and while you can fuck anyone more than once if you wanted, you are not going to bring them to your boyfriend for introduction.
When the first night closes in what are in fact the early hours of the next morning, the two of you return to the apartment and collapse onto the bed, too tired and strung out to fuck. You just strip and snuggle closer under the covers, holding each other close.
Right before you slip into sleep, Brian tells you he has some free time coming up before Christmas and asks if you’d like to go away somewhere on a break, like Bahamas?
You murmur your assent and fall asleep with your head on his chest, dreaming of fucking Brian on a sandy beach in the Bahamas.
*********
In the last week of October, when you’re relatively free from slaving away for gallery shows, Édouard invites you to accompany his team to a restoration site at an old abandoned Church in Buenos Aires.
It’s a three-month long stint, which was started in the beginning of September by a group of Argentinean conservators, and Édouard and his team are to join them in the last four weeks, to help them wrap up the work.
You’re ecstatic as you call to tell Brian, and just as expected, he’s delighted for you. However, he tells you that Ted and Blake are tying the knot in December, so your vacation plans together will have to be adjusted accordingly. There’s no way he’s going to bear the wrath of Deb’s anger if you are not present at the ceremony, he says.
You almost want to tell him to fuck the wedding, that you want to get the hell out of there with him. But somehow you don’t think he’ll understand your reasoning at such short notice.
The whole world has gone crazy, you decide. Ted and Blake, you shake your head in amazement. They are getting married at the end of the second week of December, which was the planned time of your getaway with Brian. So now the vacation has moved to the Fifteenth, exactly a day after their wedding.
"Theodore and his twink are getting married," Brian snorts. "And we are the ones going on the honeymoon."
Your answering laugh sounds hollow to your own ears.
*********
The plane lands in Buenos Aires to pleasantly mild weather and clear skies.
Your team’s home base is a small hotel in Puerto Madero, a fast moving and busy shopping district at the heart of the city.
Édouard tells everyone to chill out and relax for a couple of days, as he plans on starting work from the coming Monday. So you and a group of friends, which includes Stan, hang out at Caminito the first night, the colorful walkway in La Boca dominated by tango dancers and artisans, before moving on to the pricey nightclubs at Puerto Madero.
The next day, you and Sheryl, one of the art students from NYU who is part of the team, spend the whole day at Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, studying the beautiful, rare works of some of the most renowned European masters from the pre-Renaissance era.
Monday morning, your team of ten is loaded onto an air-conditioned coaster and taken just outside the city, to the south, to the renovation site inside an old Spanish Church.
Édouard says the Church is more than a hundred years old and the Argentinean government has declared most of the structure a national monument, cordoning it off to public access, with efforts to preserve its architecture and to restore it to its past magnificence on the way. A portion of it, however, has been made accessible to the conservators with the blessings of the Ministry of Culture, so they can work inside on the project.
The team makes its way inside, Édouard greeting members of the Argentinean teams, as you look at the aged but not yet crumbling walls of the building - the structure reminiscent of old Spanish Colonial architecture. As you step into the foyer and look up at the wall, you suddenly stop breathing for a second, finally understanding why you are here.
The mural is not as long or sprawling as some of the walls you’d worked on in New York were, but it’s magnificently painted - the details vivid and commanding, making you realize that you’re in the presence of a masterpiece.
It’s a depiction of "the Last Supper" and you and your team are here to try and restore it back to it’s past grandeur.
You can see the team that has already been working here has completed a large portion of the preservation work. A portion of the wall that seems to have disintegrated with age, has been replaced with a lining of mortar and brick, the new surface now being smoothed and varnished by two conservators. Most of the remaining surface is covered with scratches and marks left by passing time but you don’t see anyone sandpapering the peeling paint here. This piece of art is apparently too rare to sandpaper away. Restoring it would mean using the minimum of force and the maximum of caution to preserve its original form as much as possible.
That afternoon, after unpacking your gear, you join the Spanish speaking local workers with your varnish and cleaning rags, and settle down to the job.
Time moves fast, especially with the hard work and the long hours, and you return each night to your hotel room and collapse onto your bed in exhaustion. You speak to Brian once every few days, telling him about your work and the sights you see. You can tell that his schedule has been keeping him busy too. He tells you he has a conference to attend in Los Angeles on the Tenth of December but will be back right before Ted’s reception.
"You better," you warn him. "Or Deb will have your remaining ball."
He says he has no plans to stand in the line of Deb’s fury and plans to be home in time.
"We should come here sometime," you tell him one night. "You have to see the tango dancers."
"Maybe we can go there in December," Brian suggests.
"Please, not this close," you groan. "It’s getting hot here, you know. I don’t want to see this place again for at least another... two years."
"Already sick of it," he teases. "Aren’t the guys supposed to be hot?"
"They are but I am too pooped out to fuck them." You sigh. "Besides, they all speak Spanish."
"Now that is hot!" He laughs. "Not you being pooped out, I mean. But the Spanish speaking guys."
"None of them are as hot as you are." You yawn, feeling sleep approaching you.
He tells you to go to sleep and you do.
*********
Work may be hectic enough to render going out and cruising Spanish guys every night a very cumbersome activity, but fucking Stan every other night in his hotel room is a little too convenient.
Or at least you thought so. Until one night during the third week of your stay in the city, when, after you’ve fucked Stan and are about to roll out of the bed and reach for your clothes, he turns around and starts talking to you.
"I saw your boyfriend at the opening," he begins, making you pause in mid-movement, your hand hovering above your shoes. "He is very beautiful."
You take a deep breath and pull your hand back, turning to face him. "Yes, he is."
"Very successful too." Stan looks into your eyes. "Seems very close to you. Very proud of what you’ve accomplished."
You look at him. "He is."
"As he should be." You can see he’s struggling to smile, but for some reason the effort isn’t coming through as successfully as it did in the past. "You’re a very talented man. Not many people are as special as you are."
There is something in his voice that makes you feel uneasy. As if you’re about to witness an act that was never supposed to take place. You look into his eyes. "He’s special too."
He is quiet for a moment and then he nods. "He has to be, for you to love him so much."
You stay silent and stare at him, watching his eyes blink slowly as he looks at your face. After a moment, he says,
"But don’t you think, Justin, that humans have truly a great capacity to love?"
You watch him carefully. "Of course, they do."
He moistens his lips and sits up on the bed to face you. "That they can sometimes love a lot of people without compromising their love for any one person?"
You don’t know what to say to this. Of course, you can love more than one person at a time. But you can’t be in love with more than person at a time. You suspect it is the latter that he is talking about.
"Don’t you think human heart is big enough to encompass love for more than one person?" His voice has deepened with emotion, his face flushed as he stares at you imploringly, his breath coming out in short puffs.
"There are different kinds of love, Stan." You try to explain calmly. "The one you feel for a lover cannot be duplicated for anyone else, not if you have already found your soul mate."
You are reaching for your shoe again when suddenly he throws one arm around your head and presses closer to you, tries to kiss you on the lips. You feel a moist tongue touch your lips and stiffen in response, bringing your hands up to push him back.
"Hey," you snarl, as you stand up and away from him. "I told you I didn’t kiss on the mouth."
Your anger, however, deflates at the sight of his misery. He looks so upset at your rejection that you almost feel sorry for him.
"How do you know you have found your soul mate?" he demands.
"For God’s sake, Stan." You throw your hands up in exasperation. "What the fuck happened to you? I thought you didn’t believe in falling for anyone after your last boyfriend."
He stares up at you in anguish, before blurting out. "That’s what I’d thought too."
For a second, you have to close your eyes in frustration, and then you grab your things, turn around and walk out of the room.
And that is the last time you fuck Stan.
*********
continued in part 3