Decisions, Chapter 3
This is the third chapter of Decisions. Chapter One is here. Chapter Two is here. I think there will be a total of four, but so little in life is certain and my muses can be unpredictable.
I didn't even know what beta-ing was, and yet I was lucky enough to find myself the best beta on the earth (and possibly other planets),
gmta_nz, without whom this would totally suck.
I also want to thank
orlith for safer sex/boy stuff beta-ing the smutty parts. Also, OMG love to my banner goddess, KT, who has arms as pretty as Brian Kinney's.
I work for feedback. Gimme gimme or I might stop writing.
Decisions, Chapter 3
By Xie
"Ever notice that ‘what the hell’ is always the right decision?” - Marilyn Monroe
Justin’s POV
I heard my cell phone ringing. It stopped and rolled to voice mail.
A minute later it rang again. I let it roll to voice mail again.
The third time I opened one eye just long enough to make sure I could find the phone, and picked it up without looking at the caller ID, which would have meant opening my eye again. “Hello.”
“Hau’oli Makahiki Hou!”
OK, I was definitely sleep deprived but I was pretty sure that wasn’t English or any other language I recognized.
“Justin?” Now, THAT I recognized.
“Daph?”
“Hi!!! That was ‘Happy New Year’ in Hawaiian!” As if that was going to make it all clear.
“Justin?”
“Daph?”
“Did I wake you up?”
“Daphne, it’s ummmmm… still dark.” I pulled the cell back and looked at the time display. “Daph! It’s fucking 4 AM!”
“Oh my god, I’m sorry! I forgot the time difference. I’m still in Hawaii.” She’d gone to Hawaii for Christmas with some friends from school.
Brian grumbled from the other side of the bed, “What the fuck?”
“It’s Daph. Go back to sleep.” I got out of bed and went into the bathroom.
“Who was that, was that Brian?” She sounded excessively happy.
“Yeah. Daph, are you drunk?”
She giggled. “Well duh! Would I have forgotten the time difference if I wasn’t a little drunk? So that was really Brian?”
“No, some nameless sex partner who happened to know who Daph is. Of COURSE it’s Brian.” And I was the blond one in this conversation.
“So, where are you?”
“We’re in New York.”
“He’s visiting you?”
“Not exactly. We’re here picking up my stuff.” I closed the lid of the toilet and sat down on it. My ass was freezing. “Ummm, Daph? Can we catch up on all this tomorrow? When it’s light out and my brain is awake?”
“You’re MOVING BACK?”
I sighed. “Yeah.” Brian threw open the door and walked up to the toilet, and then stopped, totally bewildered to find me sitting on it. I got up and then at the last minute, put the lid up for him. He didn’t seem to have his eyes open.
I went back to the bedroom and climbed into the bed and shoved my cold feet over into Brian’s warm spot. Then I scooted my whole body over onto it. “OK, he’s taking a piss. We have one minute. Yes, I’m moving back. Everything’s great. I’ll call you tomorrow, OK? While Brian is trying on clothes.” Which should take the better part of the next two days, because his supply of black pants and sleeveless shirts that only six people on the East Coast were capable of differentiating from each other was running low.
I turned the phone off and put it on the bedside table just as Brian came back to bed. His hair was sticking up all over the place, which always made me horny. That and the fact that he was naked and that Brian mostly always made me horny. He looked at me in confusion. “You’re on the wrong side.”
“Yours was warmer.” I pushed back the cover and patted the bed. He climbed in and I pulled the blankets over us both and wrapped him in my arms and legs. I don’t think he ever really woke up.
Brian’s POV
When I woke up the next day, I was half on top of Justin and half on the mattress. He was still sound asleep. I lay there looking at him sleep for a few minutes, willing thoughts of strong dark coffee into his head. He didn’t open his eyes. So I touched his eyelashes with my fingertip, and saw his lips move just the tiniest bit. I ran my finger down his face and traced his lips, first his upper lip, then back and forth over his lower lip, barely touching it. His lips had opened at the first touch of my finger, and then his eyes. I smiled at him and he smiled back, and I kissed him.
“You know,” I said, using my most persuasive voice, “I’ll bet if I order breakfast now, it wouldn’t come until you’d had time to blow me.”
He laughed. “I want to go out to breakfast.”
“I bet if I made a reservation now, before they could seat us, you’d have time to blow me.”
He licked his lips. I smiled. He looked at the phone. “OK, make the reservation. You’re just wasting time.”
Justin took me to a place he liked to go in the Village, a place that definitely didn’t require reservations, and I drank coffee and picked at a bagel while he ate eggs and smoked salmon. We were supposed to stay for two more days, but I guess I’d caught some of his restlessness from the night before. I leaned forward and grabbed his hand. “Let’s go back today.”
He sat back, but left me holding his hand. “I have to go see Armand, and I’m not sure he’s around today.”
“OK, we can do that. If you can see him, let’s go home today.”
“I thought you wanted to go clothes shopping.”
I shrugged.
It was late afternoon by the time we stopped at the gallery and checked out of the hotel. Justin wanted to drive home, but about halfway there he was yawning. Not wanting to die in a pathetic conflagration on the turnpike, I took over. He was curled up and sound asleep a few minutes later, and never woke up even when I stopped for gas, or when I pulled into the garage at home.
I sat there for a little while, looking at him. His hair was getting kind of shaggy again, he’d probably say he needed to get it cut. He talked about getting it cut more than he actually did, though. I liked having a little something to grab, but it was his hair. I reached across to wake him up, and suddenly realized I was afraid. Afraid of him doing something stupid, of making a mistake he couldn’t fix, of doing the wrong thing with his life. And I couldn’t even make my hand touch his shoulder. I just sat there, frozen. And then I rested my forehead on the steering wheel of the car I bought him, sitting in the garage of the house I bought him, and wondered what the fuck I’d thought I was doing.
“Brian?” I looked over and he’d woken up, and probably wondered what we were doing just sitting there. And when I looked at him, his face lit up with that fucking smile of his, and he said, “What are you doing? C’mon, let’s bring this shit in.” As if he hadn’t been practically snoring five minutes ago.
When we went inside, the first place Justin went was his studio, carrying a box of painting supplies. I followed him in with another one of his boxes, and found him standing at the foot of a tall scaffold in front of a gigantic canvas on the biggest studio wall. He’d set his box down on the table and looked like he was about to climb up. I collared him and said, “In the morning, Spiderman. You were too tired to keep your eyes open, you can’t climb on that thing now.”
He gave me a look that, if translated from the Justin, would have been something like, “Excuse me? I’m almost 23 years old and have been living on my own in the most dangerous city in America for the last eight months, who are you telling what to do?”
Fortunately he didn’t say it out loud, so I just ignored it and dragged him upstairs.
Justin’s POV
I wasn’t sure what was wrong with Brian in the car. He’d had his head down on the steering wheel and when he looked at me, his eyes looked kind of worried or scared. But I’ve learned those are the worst times of all to try to get him to talk. He always reacts like he’s being cornered.
One of the things I figured out during my “no talking about stuff” phase was that Brian does actually have a deep need to discuss things. He just likes to do it in single sentences spaced out over a number of different conversations, interspersed with a lot of non-verbal communication like sulking and fucking and buying shit.
We brought a few boxes into the studio, but before I could put anything away or check out my new scaffolding, he somehow got me upstairs and naked in the bedroom before I realized it. He’s good at that. And I found a really good way to get that sad scared look out of his eyes. That’s something I’m good at.
He was running his hands all over me slowly, down my back and over my ass and then up my sides. I started to touch him, gently, brushing my hands and my mouth over his chest and then dropping down to sit on the bed and pressing my lips into his stomach. He brought his hands up behind my head and pulled me in tight, fisting my hair and bending his knees just a little, angling his cock up towards my mouth.
I ignored him and kept pressing kisses into his belly and then down to the soft skin inside his thighs. I slid my hands around to his ass and pulled him in closer, breathing in the smell from his cock and his pubes and his balls, burying my face in it. He pulled away from me and pushed me back, and I let him fall on top of me, our feet still on the floor. He crawled up between my legs, his knees moving me backwards, until I was lying stretched out under him. He kept moving up over me, holding his weight on his arms, every muscle standing out. He was starting to glisten with sweat. I lunged forward and licked at his arms, tracing the lines of his muscles with my tongue, trying to sit up and get closer to him.
Brian used his head to butt me back down to the bed, and then kissed me while he slowly let his groin drop down onto me. His hard cock touched mine, but just barely, and he brushed it back and forth against me. I tried to lift up and press against him hard, but he bent his knees a little and pulled back, so I couldn’t get any contact.
I lay back down, frustrated, and he pushed himself off me and sat back on his heels, still kneeling between my spread legs. He took his cock in his hand and suddenly grinned at me. I smiled back, a little uncertain. He bit his lip and started to trace his cock over my bare skin, leaving little tracks of precum on me, a little bit on my stomach and across my pubes, then a glistening line down my cock, which made me shudder and try to press up to him again. But he just kept moving, dragging the head of his cock on me, down onto the skin of my inner thighs, his hand moving slowly on himself while he milked little bits of wetness onto me, marking me with them. Everywhere he touched me and wet me tingled, and the skin of his cock was burning straight through me. I was starting to feel kind of crazy and confined. I wanted him to fuck me.
“Put your knees up.” His voice sounded detached and breathless at the same time. I lifted my knees and spread my legs wider, tucking my heels almost all the way under my hips. He shifted himself forward and let his weight drop to one arm, and started dragging his cock over me again, first along my cock, which jerked up towards him even though I kept my hips on the mattress this time. Then back through my pubes and down each thigh, down the little crease where my thigh met my groin, back and forth across my balls. I was shivering and my hips kept moving and shifting closer to him.
His eyes were following the movement of his cock, and his lips were open, his tongue just barely showing. He was totally lost in what he was doing, and I fought the urge to cover my eyes with my arms, because his face was so beautiful like this, he seemed so focused and intent on touching me and marking me, his hand moving on his cock and bringing each bit of moisture out onto the head and then onto me.
He shifted the head of his cock under my balls, pressing it into the space behind them, pressing down hard. And now I had to lift up, and groan, I couldn’t help it, his cock was pushing into me and there was no way not to try to meet that feeling, that pressure and wetness. The heat of his skin on my skin. But he pulled back, and let go of his cock, and settled back onto his heels, and put his hands on the sides of my hips and said, “Roll over, Justin.” And I did, without thinking, without hesitation.
And felt him start the same mesmerizing tracing again, his cock passing over my skin, him lifting himself over me and touching it to the small of my back, the backs of my thighs, the crack of my ass, back to that spot behind my balls, probing at it, letting his cock move past my hole, making me rise up on my knees and grab the sheets in my hands and clench my jaw and moan. He did it again, moving his bare cock down the crack of my ass and then sliding it past my opening and down the insides of my thighs again. I didn’t have one coherent thought in my head at that point, and I couldn’t have gotten a word out if I’d thought of one to say.
His hands were on my hips again, and this time he moved me to my side, my back to him, without saying a word. I felt languid and frantic all at once, not sure whether to twist around and push him over and throw myself on top of him, or to beg him to fuck me, or to just let his hands move me where he wanted me. I felt like I could have done any of those things, or all of them, but he was suddenly curving himself behind me, holding my legs together. “Cross your ankles,” he whispered, and I did, not sure why. I heard him pop the lid on the lube, and expected to feel his finger in my ass, but instead he pushed his hand in between my thighs, slippery and wet, and then pulled it back out.
Brian had his leg over mine, keeping me from untangling my ankles or spreading my legs. His lubed hand was on his cock, and I felt a jolt of excitement so hard it almost hurt, and my ass clenched tight. Then I felt his cock pressing against the backs of my thighs, right below my ass crack. And he pushed, not up between my cheeks but down between my thighs, sliding through the lube and the heat, pushing on the back of my balls and my perineum, prodding at me, then pulling back and sliding in again, back and forth, his hand coming forward and grabbing my cock. The base of his cock was grinding down onto my hole with every thrust, and I bent at the waist and pushed back into it.
He was rocking his hips against my ass, his cock sliding in and out between my thighs, while the motion pushed my cock forward into his lubed fist, and then back as he pulled back. Every time I felt his cock start sliding in again, I tried to angle myself so it would hit that spot behind my balls, but I couldn’t open my legs. His leg was holding me down, my thighs making a tight tunnel for him to fuck. I made it tighter, as tight as I could, and he groaned in my ear, and his hand started moving faster on me while he pumped harder. I knew he was going to come, and I suddenly realized I was going to feel it shooting onto my skin, soaking my balls, and just the thought of it made my cock get painfully, achingly hard in Brian’s slick hand.
And then he went rigid behind me, and his breath caught, and I felt it, that hot burning flood all over my balls and my thighs, running down my legs and onto my cock and onto Brian’s fist. And then I started to come, too, the sensation of heat and wetness pushing me over the edge, making me arch my back and twist my legs away from his, spreading them and pushing into him and letting wave after wave of heat pour out of me and through me.
I rolled over onto my back, towards him, and Brian pressed his face down my chest and onto my stomach, licking at the come that was everywhere. He licked my neck and chest and belly, and pushed his face into all the wetness, his come and mine mixed together, burying himself in it. He tongue was all over me, on my cock and then on my balls, lapping at them, dipping into the little crease between my thighs and groin. He nuzzled himself into the insides of my thighs, and he had come on his face and in his hair, and I sat up suddenly and curved myself down to him, licking at his face and kissing him frantically.
He followed me up and then pushed me down, lying on top of me, kissing me, our tongues tangled up, tasting each other on our mouths and faces, our bodies sticky and hot and wet, my thighs slippery with lube and his spit.
I pushed him over onto his side, and grabbed the sides of his face with both hands, and kissed him, my mouth open. “Brian.”
He smiled gently at me, with that clear happy look in his eyes I pretty much only saw right after we fucked. “Brian.”
He touched his forehead to mine and kissed me softly on my lips. “Mmmm.”
“Brian, please, can’t we…”
He sighed. “Can’t we what?” Like he didn’t know exactly what I was talking about.
I felt my face getting red, and I hid it against his neck. “I want you to come inside me.” I whispered it.
He didn’t say anything right away, just stroked my hair and held me. And then he sighed again. “Justin.” He was staring straight up at the ceiling.
“Why can’t we?”
“You know why.”
He was still holding me, but he wasn’t playing with my hair anymore. I pulled away and leaned up on my right elbow and looked at him, with my other hand on his chest. I looked right at him, even though he kept his eyes turned a little away from me.
“But, other guys in open relationships, who are both negative, they have unprotected sex with each other but protected sex with other guys. Why can’t we do that?”
“No.”
I didn’t say anything, just put my head back down on his shoulder. “No” didn’t leave a heck of a lot of room for discussion.
Brian hadn’t moved, and I wasn’t expecting him to say anything else, but he did, and his voice was really quiet. “You want my come in your ass after ‘all the places my dick has been,’ I think those were your words?”
I tensed up. I wasn’t really sure if this was the Brian Kinney Tough Love Safe Sex lecture or he was genuinely angry at me about my reaction to the visit from the syphilis fairy last year. We were probably going to be a hundred and ten before we finished having all the conversations we needed to have about shit that happened in the past. Every one of them two sentences at a time.
I just closed my eyes. After a while his hand went back to stroking my hair. I don’t think he even knew he was doing it.
Brian’s POV
I lay there holding Justin for a while, and when he was asleep, I slid away from him and went downstairs. Melanie was there, watching television, a glass on the table in front of her, an open bottle on the bar. I could almost learn to like Mel if she’d just not talk.
“I can go if you want.” She started to get up.
I shrugged. “As long as you’re not watching some dipshit chick flick, I don’t care.”
“Do I look like someone who watches dipshit chick flicks, Mr. ‘I’m Only Going to See X-Men 3 Because Michael Wants To’?”
I ignored her and sat down at the computer and read my email.
“We found a place to rent, did Lindsay tell you?”
That was news. I’d pretty much gotten Justin into the bedroom without even getting everything out of the car. “No.”
“Yeah, a house around the corner from Michael and Ben’s.”
I laughed. “That is so fucking perfect. The two little Stepford families.”
It was her turn to shrug. “It’s a good situation for us, for the kids.” Sometimes she was too easy, but other times she just refused to take the bait. I never could quite figure Mel out.
“Anyway, I start my new job next week, so we’re going to try to get moved in over the next few days. Lindsay’s going up to Toronto day after tomorrow to get everything packed.” It had surprised me how hard it was to get them to agree to let me pay for the move.
“Another tragic mistake rectified.”
That pissed her off. “Somebody fucking blew up a bomb in our faces, Brian. Lindsay was scared. I was scared. Fuck, Brian, you were scared. We all do weird shit when we’re scared.”
“I didn’t flee the fucking country.”
“No, you actually did a smart thing for a change. You went and found something that mattered to you before you lost it for good.”
I got up abruptly and went to the bar. I poured the Jack Daniels into a glass and swallowed it down.
“And then I lost it anyway.” I had actually not meant to say that. Maybe I only thought it.
Melanie didn’t say anything right away. I poured another drink.
“You didn’t lose him. He’s upstairs asleep in your bed.”
“Yeah.” I sounded bitter. “Everything’s perfect now. We’re going to live happily ever after, until he figures out how much of his life he’s giving up. Wasn’t that the song you and Lindsay were singing last year?”
“Justin isn’t a kid with a crush. He’s a grown man and it’s up to him to decide how he wants to live his life. For some incomprehensible reason, he wants to live it with you. As long as that’s fine with you, why is the rest of it your business at all?”
“Who says it’s fine with me?”
Melanie burst out laughing. “Oh, Jesus, Brian, get a fucking grip. Have you looked in the mirror lately? That weird muscle spasm you’ve been having in the lower half of your face? It’s called SMILING. People do it when they’re happy. When things in their life are going how they want them to go.”
I didn’t say anything, just swallowed what was left in my glass. I felt a muscle in my jaw twitch, but I didn’t think it was a smile.
Mel went back to her movie. And in a little while, I went back upstairs to Justin.
Justin’s POV
After Brian left in the morning, I worked in my studio until my hand started fucking up, and then went out to the media room and checked my email.
There was one from Michael, wondering about doing another issue of Rage. I had mixed feelings about it. Even though I could do a lot of the drawing on my computer, it took its toll on my hand. But I wasn’t ready to say goodbye to Rage, and I knew Michael needed the money.
Technically I needed the money too, which was another conversation I was going to have to have with Brian, the one where we figure out how a 22-year-old starving painter/comic book artist lives with a businessman worth millions without feeling like a mistress or playing some stupid game like “Just let me pay half the bills honey,” when half the monthly bills probably exceeded his annual income. Yeah, I was really looking forward to that. I’d rather stick to arguing over whether or not I could have full fat yogurt in the refrigerator.
Daphne had written she was home, so I called her to see if she wanted to get together. She wanted to come see the house. She said she’d bring food. That’s what best friends are for.
Her initial impression of the place was mostly conveyed by a series of breathless “oh my gods” while I showed her the house, the pool, and as much of the land as we were going to want to see in January. She actually got in our shower. “Jesus, this is bigger than your bedroom in New York.”
When we went down to the studio, she didn’t say anything at first, just looked around with wide eyes.
“God, Justin, this is amazing. I mean, I thought the loft was cool, but this…”
I shrugged. “It’s all right.”
She hit me. I laughed.
We went into the media room and she sighed and squealed again over the sound system. While I put on some CDs, she threw herself backwards on the sofa and smiled at me happily.
“Well, you’ve got everything now. Great work, great sex, great house. And you have a cute butt. It’s like, the perfect life.”
“Yeah, and he still seems to think I’m making some huge sacrifice to be here.”
“He has low self-esteem.” Daphne was getting her masters in public health at Pitt, where she clearly was taking way too many psych classes.
“Brian has low self esteem like Brian has a small dick.”
“He does, Justin! He doesn’t think he deserves you.”
“He doesn’t deserve me.”
“I’m serious.”
I didn’t answer her. I knew what she was saying, even though she was wrong. Brian didn’t have low self-esteem. Brian knew perfectly well that he was hot, smart, successful, and could make me scream in bed. It was just that he didn’t seem to think any of that meant he could also be happy.
“Justin? Are things OK? You sounded really happy, but now I don’t know. Are you freaking out about something?”
I went and sat down in one of the chairs by the fireplace. “I think he’s thinking about the monogamy thing again.” I wasn’t really sure what Brian was thinking, but I had a feeling that was it.
“Thinking about it yes, or thinking about it no?”
“Thinking about it yes.”
“Jesus. Why?”
“Ummm, because I keep begging him to shove his dick up my ass without a condom?”
Daphne blushed. It took a lot to get that to happen, I was glad to see I wasn’t losing my touch. “JUSTIN!!!!!! I’m sure he wouldn’t be monogamous just to fuck you raw.”
“No, I think he wants to do it to make me happy.” I realized I didn’t sound glad about that. “In fact, I think he IS doing it, he just hasn’t admitted it yet.” I hadn’t actually admitted that to myself yet either. Damn, Daph was good.
“Why does that freak you out? He did it before.” Daphne always got all romantic over our wedding that wasn’t.
“Yeah, and he turned into some kind of weird pod version of Brian. I don’t think monogamy is good for him.”
She didn’t say anything for a while. “Isn’t that kind of up to him, though, Justin? If that’s what he wants?”
I got up and flopped down on my stomach on the rug in front of the fireplace. “Well, does he want it, or is he doing it for me?”
“Are you thinking he won’t be able to do it, that he’ll cheat on you?” She sounded doubtful.
I just groaned. “Fuck no. What I’m afraid is that if he promised me he’d fuck only me, and I was crushed in some horrible industrial accident, and before I died I didn’t manage to give him permission to have sex with someone else, he’d never fuck again if he lived to be a hundred.” That was the whole problem.
She didn’t answer and I finally looked up at her. She had this weird expression on her face, kind of like pity. “You’re both freaks, you know that? Total freaks.”
“I know. We are.”
She’d brought pizza and beer and an hour later we were happily stuffing our faces in front of the TV. We were also maybe a little bit stoned, having raided Brian’s stash. But we’d smoked it out by the pool so Lindsay and Mel wouldn’t come in and freak out about it.
“Well, are the kiddies having fun tonight?” It was Brian, standing in the door looking as fucking hot at the end of a long, hard day as he’d looked walking out that morning. Nobody looked as good in a suit as Brian.
He smiled at Daphne. He’d always liked her, partly because she was so loyal to me but mostly because she thought he was six kinds of hotness and didn’t hide it. Brian appreciated loyalty and lust in a person.
“I’m guessing the big greasy pizza box on the kitchen counter is dinner?”
Daphne giggled. “Yeah, Brian, just gnaw on the cardboard, we know you never eat anything with calories anyway.”
“I think that there are enough calories from the grease alone to get me through to morning, but I had planned on something a little more nutritious than that.”
I rolled my eyes. “Daph got you a salad, it’s in the fridge, and there’s cold pizza there too, for later when you’re sneaking a big glob of congealed cheese that you think I won’t notice.”
Brian went upstairs to change, and Daph and I went into the kitchen to get some more beer. When Brian came down, I’d put his chicken Ceasar on a plate and set a beer next to it, and he smiled a little. We all sat down while he ate. He didn’t make any jokes about me being a good little wife, either because he was on his best behavior in front of Daphne or because he intended to torment me later.
“So, Brian, Justin’s studio is amazing. I love it. And all he has to do for it is takeout salad and some cold pizza?”
“No, he has to put out, too.”
“Oh yeah, like he ever needed any extra incentive to put out.”
“Some things are their own reward,” Brian agreed. Daphne giggled.
I tried to decide which one of them I hated more. “You know, Brian, the chances of my putting out tonight just got dramatically lower.”
He laughed and took a swallow of his beer. “Don’t worry, Daphne. He talks tough, but that’s all it is, talk.”
I decided to change the subject. “So, did you figure out your internship yet?” Brian kind of smirked at me when I said that. Me being an expert on internships.
Daphne brightened up. “Yeah, I’m doing it at this clinic downtown that does programs for the management of chronic pain for low income people, it’s going to be great. They have pharmacists and even an acupuncture clinic.”
I rolled my eyes. “Oh, yeah, that’s what someone with constant pain needs, to be stuck with needles.”
She just shrugged. “It helps. I’ve had it.”
I stared at her. “For what?”
“Carpal tunnel.” Daphne had complained about that all last year, while she was finishing up her undergrad degree.
“Now you’re sounding like Ben.”
Brian was just listening, not even really eating his salad. He took a swallow of beer.
Daphne persisted. “You should try it. For your hand.”
I started rubbing my right hand with my left before I realized I was doing it. Then I stopped. “My hand’s fine.” Brian snorted and got up and put his plate in the sink. He’d hardly eaten, but he usually didn’t eat much at night.
Daphne left after we ate, and I went looking for Brian. He was on the sofa with the remote in his hand, but the TV was off. I slid over the back and landed in his lap. I got my arms around his neck and sighed dramatically.
“Now would be a good time.”
“Good time for what?”
“That thing you don’t need a bomb to say.”
“Oh, that.” But his lips twitched in a promising way.
“You can ask me to marry you, but you still have an anxiety attack saying you love me?”
He didn’t say anything for a minute. Then it hit me.
“Was I not supposed to bring up you asking me to marry you?”
“That didn’t turn out so good, I decided we should try something different this time.”
Even though that was totally fucked up, I had to laugh. “Sex is always good.”
He laughed and got his hands into my hair and kissed my jaw. “It is.”
“So, speaking of sex and trying something different, any chance we could renegotiate the prenuptial agreement to include not fucking other guys and sex without condoms?” I seriously had no idea those words were going to come out of my mouth. I froze on his lap, and he kind of froze up too. But when he answered, his tone was light.
“I was hoping we could get a few other clauses in there.”
I laughed, even if it was a little nervous. “Let me guess, you’ve never liked that blowjob language.”
“And I was thinking something about you not driving within a fifteen mile radius of a major metropolitan center.”
“OK, so this is your idea of how to get me to negotiate? Insulting my driving?”
Brian sighed and buried his face in my shoulder. I knew this had been too easy.
“Justin. Seriously. Is that what you want?” His voice was muffled.
“Don’t do what I want.”
“Jesus, can I get that in writing?”
“I mean it, Brian. This is where it all got fucked up before. I want you to do what you want, not what I want.”
“Is that what happened last time?”
“That and you wouldn’t fuck me.”
He lifted up his face and looked at me. “When the hell wouldn’t I fuck you?”
“The night you wanted to just CUDDLE.” The only time in the history of the known universe Brian Kinney had turned down a blowjob.
He put his face back onto my shoulder. “That might possibly have been more metaphorical than literal.”
It took me a minute to figure out what he meant by that.
“You ASSHOLE! You did that on purpose!”
I jumped up and started pacing around the room. I couldn’t believe he did that.
“Did what on purpose?” He was playing innocent.
“You fucking pretended not to want to fuck so I’d talk about that FUCKING Art Forum article. You are such an asshole.” I was seriously pissed.
Brian sat up. “Yeah, so you believed it. You believed that asking you to marry me made my dick soft. Even though the morning after you said yes I fucked you on every horizontal and vertical surface in the loft, and if there were any diagonal surfaces I’d have fucked you on those too. Maybe I’m not the only one who got his brain fucked up by that bomb.”
I sat down on one of the chairs and looked at him.
“Brian. I’m not kidding. This has to stop, you trying to manipulate me.”
“What am I supposed to do when you’re being a complete twat?”
“You’re an articulate guy and I have highly advanced verbal skills. If you think I should do something, you need to persuade me, not manipulate me.”
He ran a hand through his hair. I saw him look over towards the bar, but he stayed where he was. I got up and went back over and sat next to him. He didn’t move, but he didn’t pull away when I put my hand on his thigh.
“OK, enough talking for one night. Your head’s going to explode.”
He groaned. “We talked about our relationship. Now you’re going to want to fuck me.”
“Well, if you say you love me, then you get to fuck me instead.”
“I fucking love you.” And he lunged at me, pushing me down onto the sofa and kissing me hard on my mouth. When he pulled away, I just licked my lips and tried to remember what we’d been talking about.
Brian’s POV
When I got to work the next morning, I was cc’d on an email from Michael asking me, Ted, and Emmett to meet him at Woody’s after work. I groaned. Michael was feeling sentimental and wanted to get the boys together again.
Ted walked in after knocking on the open door. I hated it when he did that. If you’re going to fucking walk in, walk in. If you’re going to knock, wait to be invited. Pick one. “Did you see this email from Michael?”
“I just got it.”
“Well, are you going?”
“What are you, my fucking social secretary?”
“I’ll take that as a yes?” I glared at him and he left, laughing. Never hire friends.
Cynthia came in as I sucked down a mouthful of coffee. She was lugging a huge stack of papers, and I wondered again why I thought it was a good idea to open my own company. Oh yeah: Millions of dollars.
“This is the documentation for the meeting this morning. You can go through it all, or you can just fake it like you usually do.” Fortunately I was brilliant that way.
The meeting was the usual waste of time, but I had lunch with a prospective client who’d flown in from Cleveland, and was in a fairly good mood by the time I got to Woody’s. I got a drink and was shooting pool when a guy I’d seen around gave me an unmistakable look when he walked past me. I ignored him.
“You’re doing it, aren’t you?” It was Ted, rising up from out of nowhere like a swamp creature in the fog. I had no fucking idea what he was talking about.
“Doing what?” I lined up my next shot.
“That fucking Justin without a condom thing that is a word very closely related to MONOTONY.”
I considered my next shot carefully. “Explain to me in what wild perverse alternative universe this is your business?”
“The universe where you brought it up first?”
I walked over to the other side of the table and picked up my glass. “It’s remotely possible that I’m thinking about it.”
“Does Justin know you’re thinking about it?”
I took my shot and sank it. I nodded. Fuck him if he missed it.
He didn’t. “Jesus.”
I sank another shot. “Just keep it to yourself, Theodore.”
“You haven’t told Michael?” This time I missed my shot and waved to Ted to take his turn.
“No. Not going to.” This was the last thing I’d tell Michael.
Ted took his shot and somehow sunk a ball. It was even his own ball. He started to line up his next shot, and I swallowed the last of my drink. He sunk another ball. I wondered if the table was rigged somehow. He missed the next one though, so it must have just been some kind of bizarre fluke.
“Why aren’t you telling him?”
I sunk a ball. “Let’s see. It’s a three letter word beginning with ‘B.’ See if you can guess.”
“Ben?”
“I knew that you could.” I looked at Ted then instead of taking my shot. “Theodore. Do. Not. Discuss. This. With. Michael. I might tell him, but I’ll tell him. Not you. Is there any part of this that you don’t understand?”
“Does this fall under the pain of death clause in my contract?”
“The most painful of pain of death clauses imaginable. It won’t be fast and it won’t be pretty.”
“Everything can be pretty if you just want it to be.” Emmett swooped down on us. I couldn’t figure out how someone who wore clothes exclusively chosen from my personal designer reject pile came fucking close to dressing as well as I did. I kind of missed Emmett’s disco trash days. “What’s not pretty?”
“Brian’s just going over some of the terms of my employment contract.”
“Hold out for the sauna in your private bathroom, Teddy. He can afford it.”
“Hey guys!”
It was Michael. “Well, if it’s not the hostess of our little soiree.” I handed the pool cue to Emmett and steered Michael over to the bar. “Double Chivas on the rocks for me, and whatever Mikey wants.”
He got a beer. Naturally. I was surprised he hadn’t switched to diet Coke like Ted. Of course, we still sold the hard stuff hand over fist at Babylon every night, a thought that cheered me up enough to buy a third Chivas.
And then I remembered Emmett hadn’t joined the ranks of non-fucking, non-drinking, non-drug-doing fags yet, and would probably have some E. Which seemed like a very good idea if I was going to be spending the evening with my oldest friends and not having sex with strangers in the bathroom.
He slipped it to me when Michael and Ted were arguing over the name of a song that was playing, and I let it dissolve a little and then knocked back a little Chivas. And then thought that if Justin were there, he’d make me drink some water. Christ, the little fucker was there even when he wasn’t there.
Emmett had obviously taken mind-reading lessons. “Where’s Justin tonight?”
I took Emmett’s water out of his hand and drank some before handing it back. “I have no idea, amazingly, we don’t swap schedules every morning before going out.” Besides, Justin had been sound asleep with his head shoved under the pillow when I left that morning. For all I knew, he still was.
“Spill it, Emmy Lou. I can see you’re itching to ask me something.”
“Are the Kinney-Taylor nuptials back on?”
“If they ever are, I promise, you’ll be the first wedding planner we contact. But I wouldn’t worry about picking Saturdays in June just yet.”
Ted looked like he’d swallowed something the wrong way, but he kept his mouth shut for once. I didn’t remember if I’d sworn him to general secrecy or just told him not to tell Michael. You really had to be as specific as possible when threatening Theodore.
“Kinney-Taylor nuptials?” It was Michael. “Should I get my best man suit dry-cleaned?”
“Don’t do anything drastic on my account. If Justin and I decide to tie the knot, we’ll probably elope to Massachusetts like all good little faggots and lezzies.”
“You can’t get married in Massachusetts unless you live there. Even though the 14th Amendment specifically states…”
“Jesus fucking christ, Michael. You gave a little sperm to Melanie and now you’re a lawyer? Your poor kid. She’s doomed.”
Since bringing up JR typically derailed Michael from any subject he was otherwise discussing, I figured we’d now get treated to a report on the most perfect child ever born, so I went and got another drink. When I got back, he was happily passing pictures around to Ted and Emmett, who pretended to be enthralled. Since the real thing was still gracing one of my guest rooms, and I heard her gurgling on the baby monitor in the kitchen every morning while I drank my coffee, I ignored the pictures.
By the end of the evening I was pretty drunk and thought about calling Justin to come get me, but that seemed lesbianic so I just got out my cell to call the car service. One of the many inconveniences of moving to the middle of nowhere. If I’d actually moved. One more of the things I was trying not to think about unless forced to.
Michael snapped my phone shut. “I can drive you, Brian.”
“It’s too far.”
“It’ll be OK. C’mon. I’ll bring your car by Kinnetik tomorrow night and you or Ted can drive me home.”
“Yeah, Ted or I can transport you back out to the Stepford village. With the wife and kiddies and the lesbian wives and kiddies.” But I meant all that in a good way.
We were standing outside of Woody’s and I was watching the lights on all the passing cars get all streaky in the rain. Michael put his hand on my arm. “Brian? Where’s the car?”
I thought about that for a minute. I pointed. “I think it’s there, but if not, it’s somewhere else.” And then I laughed and put my hands on Michael’s shoulders. “C’mon, Mikey, let’s play find the car.”
“Brian, your Corvette needs you. Try to focus.”
There were advantages to getting shit-faced with someone who really knew what mattered. “It’s in front of the bath and body shop.”
When we got to the house, Michael walked me to the front door and took my keys away and opened it up. Justin had left the porch light on, and a few lights downstairs, but he was either in his studio or in bed, because the other rooms were dark. Michael started to head for the stairs but I steered us over to the media room. TV and another drink sounded good.
“Wanna watch a movie? I have Spiderman.”
Michael sighed and guided me to the sofa. I fell down on it and bounced. He stood looking down at me. “Should I get Justin to put you to bed?”
I shook my head. “No, Justin won’t do it. He says I have to sleep where I fall. It’s tough love.” I thought that sounded wrong so I clarified. “He says he doesn’t want to be an enabler.” My little walking, talking, breathing, fucking public service announcement.
Michael snorted. “Justin’s not entirely out of his mind on that, but some habits are harder to break than others.” It occurred to me later he didn’t mean my getting wasted, but his bringing me home.
I convinced Michael to put on the Spiderman DVD, and then a little while later I speculated on the possibility he could go get us some food in the kitchen.
“You have food in your kitchen?”
“Yes. Justin lives here now. And Mel and Lindsay and the kids are here. The kitchen is completely stuffed with food. There’s even…” I lowered my voice … “Cap'n Crunch.”
When Mikey came back with food, Justin was with him. He didn’t seem at all pissed, and even sat down with us and ate popcorn and argued with Michael about the movie. I think I fell asleep, because when I woke up, everything was really quiet. I sat up and saw them standing in the doorway talking in low voices. I listened but I couldn’t hear what they were saying.
“Hey.” They turned around and looked at me.
Michael smiled. “I’m heading out, Brian, I’ll come by Kinnetik with the car tomorrow, I’ll call you before I come.”
I got up and gave him a big hug, and he patted my back and then hugged Justin and grabbed his jacket and left.
Justin slipped his arm around me. “Want to go upstairs?”
“I thought I had to sleep where I fell?” It was one of the things he’d told me once, that he wouldn’t be like Michael.
He shrugged. “If you can make it to the bed, you can fall there as easy as anywhere.”
I did manage to get upstairs and strip off my clothes and crawl under the covers. Justin came in a few minutes later and turned off the lights and took off his clothes and got in with me. He didn’t seem mad at all, and he snuggled up to me just like he always did. I tried to remember why I was worried about that, but I couldn’t. And then I fell asleep.
Justin’s POV
I wished Brian didn’t always have to fuck himself up to figure out what he wanted to do about shit, but he did. And I was glad Michael was there to get him home, so when I found him in the kitchen making popcorn in the microwave at midnight, I decided a night of TV and junk food didn’t sound so bad. And Brian was sort of adorable when he was half-drunk, half-high, and getting carbed-up at night. I didn’t tell him I’d melted half a cube of butter onto the popcorn, either.
Brian passed out before the movie was over, but Michael and I watched it until the end. Michael’d seen it about fourteen times already, but that’s what he did with movies he liked. I think Brian had seen One Eyed Jacks at least twenty times. Michael and I were making a plan to get together and talk about Rage when Brian woke up.
He was kind of cute even if he was totally fucked up, so I brought him upstairs and curled up with him and went to sleep.
I woke up with Brian kneeling next to the bed playing with my hair. I blinked at him and he gave me a little smile and stuck his tongue in his cheek.
I scooted away and let him slip in next to me, wrapping my arms and legs around him while he scrunched himself into the warm spot I’d been lying in. He touched his forehead to mine, and slid his hands onto either side of my face and kissed me, a soft little morning kiss. I let it turn into something more, and then he broke away and just looked into my eyes. He was twisting his lips around that way he did when he was nervous, but his body where it was twining with mine, his long legs and his warm arms, felt relaxed. He smiled a little and kissed me again, and then smooshed my nose with his.
I couldn’t help smiling. “Hey.”
He kissed me again. “I ummm, I want to try that thing.” His lips turned in again, and this time I could feel some tension in his body, at least in his arms.
“OK.” I paused for a minute. “Could you be more specific?”
“I want us to…” and he dropped a little kiss on my forehead … “go three months…” and he was twisting my hair with his fingers, but gently … “without fucking other guys …” and then he pushed my hair back off my face with his right hand and cupped the back of my neck with his left … “and take an HIV test…” he kissed me again, softly, and his lips were dry… “and if everything’s OK, you know…” he nuzzled my neck … “I want to fuck you without a condom.”
Some things are hard to grasp ten seconds after waking up. This was one of them. I just sort of lay there blinking, with my hands on his upper arms and my head tucked under his chin.
Brian bent his legs and pushed mine apart, sliding his folded knees in between mine and pulling my hips up and in towards him with his hands. My left leg was lying over his waist, and I worked my right leg between his body and the mattress. We were still lying side by side, facing each other, our crotches tight together, my legs wrapped around him. He kept pulling me in closer, and nuzzling my hair and face and neck.
My first instinct was to ask if he was sure, but then I thought about how I hate the second guessing thing when he does it to me. And how I said no the first time he asked me to marry him. And the look on his face when I did.
So then my second instinct was to throw my arms around his neck and cry and tell him I loved him, which would have had two definite disadvantages, those being, one, Brian would have fucking hated it and two, I’d have looked like a lovesick teenager, which I was kind of trying to get away from.
So I just looked into his eyes and smiled at him. And pressed a kiss on his mouth and said, “I want that too.”
Continued here...
I didn't even know what beta-ing was, and yet I was lucky enough to find myself the best beta on the earth (and possibly other planets),
gmta_nz, without whom this would totally suck.
I also want to thank
orlith for safer sex/boy stuff beta-ing the smutty parts. Also, OMG love to my banner goddess, KT, who has arms as pretty as Brian Kinney's.
I work for feedback. Gimme gimme or I might stop writing.
Decisions, Chapter 3
By Xie
"Ever notice that ‘what the hell’ is always the right decision?” - Marilyn Monroe
Justin’s POV
I heard my cell phone ringing. It stopped and rolled to voice mail.
A minute later it rang again. I let it roll to voice mail again.
The third time I opened one eye just long enough to make sure I could find the phone, and picked it up without looking at the caller ID, which would have meant opening my eye again. “Hello.”
“Hau’oli Makahiki Hou!”
OK, I was definitely sleep deprived but I was pretty sure that wasn’t English or any other language I recognized.
“Justin?” Now, THAT I recognized.
“Daph?”
“Hi!!! That was ‘Happy New Year’ in Hawaiian!” As if that was going to make it all clear.
“Justin?”
“Daph?”
“Did I wake you up?”
“Daphne, it’s ummmmm… still dark.” I pulled the cell back and looked at the time display. “Daph! It’s fucking 4 AM!”
“Oh my god, I’m sorry! I forgot the time difference. I’m still in Hawaii.” She’d gone to Hawaii for Christmas with some friends from school.
Brian grumbled from the other side of the bed, “What the fuck?”
“It’s Daph. Go back to sleep.” I got out of bed and went into the bathroom.
“Who was that, was that Brian?” She sounded excessively happy.
“Yeah. Daph, are you drunk?”
She giggled. “Well duh! Would I have forgotten the time difference if I wasn’t a little drunk? So that was really Brian?”
“No, some nameless sex partner who happened to know who Daph is. Of COURSE it’s Brian.” And I was the blond one in this conversation.
“So, where are you?”
“We’re in New York.”
“He’s visiting you?”
“Not exactly. We’re here picking up my stuff.” I closed the lid of the toilet and sat down on it. My ass was freezing. “Ummm, Daph? Can we catch up on all this tomorrow? When it’s light out and my brain is awake?”
“You’re MOVING BACK?”
I sighed. “Yeah.” Brian threw open the door and walked up to the toilet, and then stopped, totally bewildered to find me sitting on it. I got up and then at the last minute, put the lid up for him. He didn’t seem to have his eyes open.
I went back to the bedroom and climbed into the bed and shoved my cold feet over into Brian’s warm spot. Then I scooted my whole body over onto it. “OK, he’s taking a piss. We have one minute. Yes, I’m moving back. Everything’s great. I’ll call you tomorrow, OK? While Brian is trying on clothes.” Which should take the better part of the next two days, because his supply of black pants and sleeveless shirts that only six people on the East Coast were capable of differentiating from each other was running low.
I turned the phone off and put it on the bedside table just as Brian came back to bed. His hair was sticking up all over the place, which always made me horny. That and the fact that he was naked and that Brian mostly always made me horny. He looked at me in confusion. “You’re on the wrong side.”
“Yours was warmer.” I pushed back the cover and patted the bed. He climbed in and I pulled the blankets over us both and wrapped him in my arms and legs. I don’t think he ever really woke up.
Brian’s POV
When I woke up the next day, I was half on top of Justin and half on the mattress. He was still sound asleep. I lay there looking at him sleep for a few minutes, willing thoughts of strong dark coffee into his head. He didn’t open his eyes. So I touched his eyelashes with my fingertip, and saw his lips move just the tiniest bit. I ran my finger down his face and traced his lips, first his upper lip, then back and forth over his lower lip, barely touching it. His lips had opened at the first touch of my finger, and then his eyes. I smiled at him and he smiled back, and I kissed him.
“You know,” I said, using my most persuasive voice, “I’ll bet if I order breakfast now, it wouldn’t come until you’d had time to blow me.”
He laughed. “I want to go out to breakfast.”
“I bet if I made a reservation now, before they could seat us, you’d have time to blow me.”
He licked his lips. I smiled. He looked at the phone. “OK, make the reservation. You’re just wasting time.”
Justin took me to a place he liked to go in the Village, a place that definitely didn’t require reservations, and I drank coffee and picked at a bagel while he ate eggs and smoked salmon. We were supposed to stay for two more days, but I guess I’d caught some of his restlessness from the night before. I leaned forward and grabbed his hand. “Let’s go back today.”
He sat back, but left me holding his hand. “I have to go see Armand, and I’m not sure he’s around today.”
“OK, we can do that. If you can see him, let’s go home today.”
“I thought you wanted to go clothes shopping.”
I shrugged.
It was late afternoon by the time we stopped at the gallery and checked out of the hotel. Justin wanted to drive home, but about halfway there he was yawning. Not wanting to die in a pathetic conflagration on the turnpike, I took over. He was curled up and sound asleep a few minutes later, and never woke up even when I stopped for gas, or when I pulled into the garage at home.
I sat there for a little while, looking at him. His hair was getting kind of shaggy again, he’d probably say he needed to get it cut. He talked about getting it cut more than he actually did, though. I liked having a little something to grab, but it was his hair. I reached across to wake him up, and suddenly realized I was afraid. Afraid of him doing something stupid, of making a mistake he couldn’t fix, of doing the wrong thing with his life. And I couldn’t even make my hand touch his shoulder. I just sat there, frozen. And then I rested my forehead on the steering wheel of the car I bought him, sitting in the garage of the house I bought him, and wondered what the fuck I’d thought I was doing.
“Brian?” I looked over and he’d woken up, and probably wondered what we were doing just sitting there. And when I looked at him, his face lit up with that fucking smile of his, and he said, “What are you doing? C’mon, let’s bring this shit in.” As if he hadn’t been practically snoring five minutes ago.
When we went inside, the first place Justin went was his studio, carrying a box of painting supplies. I followed him in with another one of his boxes, and found him standing at the foot of a tall scaffold in front of a gigantic canvas on the biggest studio wall. He’d set his box down on the table and looked like he was about to climb up. I collared him and said, “In the morning, Spiderman. You were too tired to keep your eyes open, you can’t climb on that thing now.”
He gave me a look that, if translated from the Justin, would have been something like, “Excuse me? I’m almost 23 years old and have been living on my own in the most dangerous city in America for the last eight months, who are you telling what to do?”
Fortunately he didn’t say it out loud, so I just ignored it and dragged him upstairs.
Justin’s POV
I wasn’t sure what was wrong with Brian in the car. He’d had his head down on the steering wheel and when he looked at me, his eyes looked kind of worried or scared. But I’ve learned those are the worst times of all to try to get him to talk. He always reacts like he’s being cornered.
One of the things I figured out during my “no talking about stuff” phase was that Brian does actually have a deep need to discuss things. He just likes to do it in single sentences spaced out over a number of different conversations, interspersed with a lot of non-verbal communication like sulking and fucking and buying shit.
We brought a few boxes into the studio, but before I could put anything away or check out my new scaffolding, he somehow got me upstairs and naked in the bedroom before I realized it. He’s good at that. And I found a really good way to get that sad scared look out of his eyes. That’s something I’m good at.
He was running his hands all over me slowly, down my back and over my ass and then up my sides. I started to touch him, gently, brushing my hands and my mouth over his chest and then dropping down to sit on the bed and pressing my lips into his stomach. He brought his hands up behind my head and pulled me in tight, fisting my hair and bending his knees just a little, angling his cock up towards my mouth.
I ignored him and kept pressing kisses into his belly and then down to the soft skin inside his thighs. I slid my hands around to his ass and pulled him in closer, breathing in the smell from his cock and his pubes and his balls, burying my face in it. He pulled away from me and pushed me back, and I let him fall on top of me, our feet still on the floor. He crawled up between my legs, his knees moving me backwards, until I was lying stretched out under him. He kept moving up over me, holding his weight on his arms, every muscle standing out. He was starting to glisten with sweat. I lunged forward and licked at his arms, tracing the lines of his muscles with my tongue, trying to sit up and get closer to him.
Brian used his head to butt me back down to the bed, and then kissed me while he slowly let his groin drop down onto me. His hard cock touched mine, but just barely, and he brushed it back and forth against me. I tried to lift up and press against him hard, but he bent his knees a little and pulled back, so I couldn’t get any contact.
I lay back down, frustrated, and he pushed himself off me and sat back on his heels, still kneeling between my spread legs. He took his cock in his hand and suddenly grinned at me. I smiled back, a little uncertain. He bit his lip and started to trace his cock over my bare skin, leaving little tracks of precum on me, a little bit on my stomach and across my pubes, then a glistening line down my cock, which made me shudder and try to press up to him again. But he just kept moving, dragging the head of his cock on me, down onto the skin of my inner thighs, his hand moving slowly on himself while he milked little bits of wetness onto me, marking me with them. Everywhere he touched me and wet me tingled, and the skin of his cock was burning straight through me. I was starting to feel kind of crazy and confined. I wanted him to fuck me.
“Put your knees up.” His voice sounded detached and breathless at the same time. I lifted my knees and spread my legs wider, tucking my heels almost all the way under my hips. He shifted himself forward and let his weight drop to one arm, and started dragging his cock over me again, first along my cock, which jerked up towards him even though I kept my hips on the mattress this time. Then back through my pubes and down each thigh, down the little crease where my thigh met my groin, back and forth across my balls. I was shivering and my hips kept moving and shifting closer to him.
His eyes were following the movement of his cock, and his lips were open, his tongue just barely showing. He was totally lost in what he was doing, and I fought the urge to cover my eyes with my arms, because his face was so beautiful like this, he seemed so focused and intent on touching me and marking me, his hand moving on his cock and bringing each bit of moisture out onto the head and then onto me.
He shifted the head of his cock under my balls, pressing it into the space behind them, pressing down hard. And now I had to lift up, and groan, I couldn’t help it, his cock was pushing into me and there was no way not to try to meet that feeling, that pressure and wetness. The heat of his skin on my skin. But he pulled back, and let go of his cock, and settled back onto his heels, and put his hands on the sides of my hips and said, “Roll over, Justin.” And I did, without thinking, without hesitation.
And felt him start the same mesmerizing tracing again, his cock passing over my skin, him lifting himself over me and touching it to the small of my back, the backs of my thighs, the crack of my ass, back to that spot behind my balls, probing at it, letting his cock move past my hole, making me rise up on my knees and grab the sheets in my hands and clench my jaw and moan. He did it again, moving his bare cock down the crack of my ass and then sliding it past my opening and down the insides of my thighs again. I didn’t have one coherent thought in my head at that point, and I couldn’t have gotten a word out if I’d thought of one to say.
His hands were on my hips again, and this time he moved me to my side, my back to him, without saying a word. I felt languid and frantic all at once, not sure whether to twist around and push him over and throw myself on top of him, or to beg him to fuck me, or to just let his hands move me where he wanted me. I felt like I could have done any of those things, or all of them, but he was suddenly curving himself behind me, holding my legs together. “Cross your ankles,” he whispered, and I did, not sure why. I heard him pop the lid on the lube, and expected to feel his finger in my ass, but instead he pushed his hand in between my thighs, slippery and wet, and then pulled it back out.
Brian had his leg over mine, keeping me from untangling my ankles or spreading my legs. His lubed hand was on his cock, and I felt a jolt of excitement so hard it almost hurt, and my ass clenched tight. Then I felt his cock pressing against the backs of my thighs, right below my ass crack. And he pushed, not up between my cheeks but down between my thighs, sliding through the lube and the heat, pushing on the back of my balls and my perineum, prodding at me, then pulling back and sliding in again, back and forth, his hand coming forward and grabbing my cock. The base of his cock was grinding down onto my hole with every thrust, and I bent at the waist and pushed back into it.
He was rocking his hips against my ass, his cock sliding in and out between my thighs, while the motion pushed my cock forward into his lubed fist, and then back as he pulled back. Every time I felt his cock start sliding in again, I tried to angle myself so it would hit that spot behind my balls, but I couldn’t open my legs. His leg was holding me down, my thighs making a tight tunnel for him to fuck. I made it tighter, as tight as I could, and he groaned in my ear, and his hand started moving faster on me while he pumped harder. I knew he was going to come, and I suddenly realized I was going to feel it shooting onto my skin, soaking my balls, and just the thought of it made my cock get painfully, achingly hard in Brian’s slick hand.
And then he went rigid behind me, and his breath caught, and I felt it, that hot burning flood all over my balls and my thighs, running down my legs and onto my cock and onto Brian’s fist. And then I started to come, too, the sensation of heat and wetness pushing me over the edge, making me arch my back and twist my legs away from his, spreading them and pushing into him and letting wave after wave of heat pour out of me and through me.
I rolled over onto my back, towards him, and Brian pressed his face down my chest and onto my stomach, licking at the come that was everywhere. He licked my neck and chest and belly, and pushed his face into all the wetness, his come and mine mixed together, burying himself in it. He tongue was all over me, on my cock and then on my balls, lapping at them, dipping into the little crease between my thighs and groin. He nuzzled himself into the insides of my thighs, and he had come on his face and in his hair, and I sat up suddenly and curved myself down to him, licking at his face and kissing him frantically.
He followed me up and then pushed me down, lying on top of me, kissing me, our tongues tangled up, tasting each other on our mouths and faces, our bodies sticky and hot and wet, my thighs slippery with lube and his spit.
I pushed him over onto his side, and grabbed the sides of his face with both hands, and kissed him, my mouth open. “Brian.”
He smiled gently at me, with that clear happy look in his eyes I pretty much only saw right after we fucked. “Brian.”
He touched his forehead to mine and kissed me softly on my lips. “Mmmm.”
“Brian, please, can’t we…”
He sighed. “Can’t we what?” Like he didn’t know exactly what I was talking about.
I felt my face getting red, and I hid it against his neck. “I want you to come inside me.” I whispered it.
He didn’t say anything right away, just stroked my hair and held me. And then he sighed again. “Justin.” He was staring straight up at the ceiling.
“Why can’t we?”
“You know why.”
He was still holding me, but he wasn’t playing with my hair anymore. I pulled away and leaned up on my right elbow and looked at him, with my other hand on his chest. I looked right at him, even though he kept his eyes turned a little away from me.
“But, other guys in open relationships, who are both negative, they have unprotected sex with each other but protected sex with other guys. Why can’t we do that?”
“No.”
I didn’t say anything, just put my head back down on his shoulder. “No” didn’t leave a heck of a lot of room for discussion.
Brian hadn’t moved, and I wasn’t expecting him to say anything else, but he did, and his voice was really quiet. “You want my come in your ass after ‘all the places my dick has been,’ I think those were your words?”
I tensed up. I wasn’t really sure if this was the Brian Kinney Tough Love Safe Sex lecture or he was genuinely angry at me about my reaction to the visit from the syphilis fairy last year. We were probably going to be a hundred and ten before we finished having all the conversations we needed to have about shit that happened in the past. Every one of them two sentences at a time.
I just closed my eyes. After a while his hand went back to stroking my hair. I don’t think he even knew he was doing it.
Brian’s POV
I lay there holding Justin for a while, and when he was asleep, I slid away from him and went downstairs. Melanie was there, watching television, a glass on the table in front of her, an open bottle on the bar. I could almost learn to like Mel if she’d just not talk.
“I can go if you want.” She started to get up.
I shrugged. “As long as you’re not watching some dipshit chick flick, I don’t care.”
“Do I look like someone who watches dipshit chick flicks, Mr. ‘I’m Only Going to See X-Men 3 Because Michael Wants To’?”
I ignored her and sat down at the computer and read my email.
“We found a place to rent, did Lindsay tell you?”
That was news. I’d pretty much gotten Justin into the bedroom without even getting everything out of the car. “No.”
“Yeah, a house around the corner from Michael and Ben’s.”
I laughed. “That is so fucking perfect. The two little Stepford families.”
It was her turn to shrug. “It’s a good situation for us, for the kids.” Sometimes she was too easy, but other times she just refused to take the bait. I never could quite figure Mel out.
“Anyway, I start my new job next week, so we’re going to try to get moved in over the next few days. Lindsay’s going up to Toronto day after tomorrow to get everything packed.” It had surprised me how hard it was to get them to agree to let me pay for the move.
“Another tragic mistake rectified.”
That pissed her off. “Somebody fucking blew up a bomb in our faces, Brian. Lindsay was scared. I was scared. Fuck, Brian, you were scared. We all do weird shit when we’re scared.”
“I didn’t flee the fucking country.”
“No, you actually did a smart thing for a change. You went and found something that mattered to you before you lost it for good.”
I got up abruptly and went to the bar. I poured the Jack Daniels into a glass and swallowed it down.
“And then I lost it anyway.” I had actually not meant to say that. Maybe I only thought it.
Melanie didn’t say anything right away. I poured another drink.
“You didn’t lose him. He’s upstairs asleep in your bed.”
“Yeah.” I sounded bitter. “Everything’s perfect now. We’re going to live happily ever after, until he figures out how much of his life he’s giving up. Wasn’t that the song you and Lindsay were singing last year?”
“Justin isn’t a kid with a crush. He’s a grown man and it’s up to him to decide how he wants to live his life. For some incomprehensible reason, he wants to live it with you. As long as that’s fine with you, why is the rest of it your business at all?”
“Who says it’s fine with me?”
Melanie burst out laughing. “Oh, Jesus, Brian, get a fucking grip. Have you looked in the mirror lately? That weird muscle spasm you’ve been having in the lower half of your face? It’s called SMILING. People do it when they’re happy. When things in their life are going how they want them to go.”
I didn’t say anything, just swallowed what was left in my glass. I felt a muscle in my jaw twitch, but I didn’t think it was a smile.
Mel went back to her movie. And in a little while, I went back upstairs to Justin.
Justin’s POV
After Brian left in the morning, I worked in my studio until my hand started fucking up, and then went out to the media room and checked my email.
There was one from Michael, wondering about doing another issue of Rage. I had mixed feelings about it. Even though I could do a lot of the drawing on my computer, it took its toll on my hand. But I wasn’t ready to say goodbye to Rage, and I knew Michael needed the money.
Technically I needed the money too, which was another conversation I was going to have to have with Brian, the one where we figure out how a 22-year-old starving painter/comic book artist lives with a businessman worth millions without feeling like a mistress or playing some stupid game like “Just let me pay half the bills honey,” when half the monthly bills probably exceeded his annual income. Yeah, I was really looking forward to that. I’d rather stick to arguing over whether or not I could have full fat yogurt in the refrigerator.
Daphne had written she was home, so I called her to see if she wanted to get together. She wanted to come see the house. She said she’d bring food. That’s what best friends are for.
Her initial impression of the place was mostly conveyed by a series of breathless “oh my gods” while I showed her the house, the pool, and as much of the land as we were going to want to see in January. She actually got in our shower. “Jesus, this is bigger than your bedroom in New York.”
When we went down to the studio, she didn’t say anything at first, just looked around with wide eyes.
“God, Justin, this is amazing. I mean, I thought the loft was cool, but this…”
I shrugged. “It’s all right.”
She hit me. I laughed.
We went into the media room and she sighed and squealed again over the sound system. While I put on some CDs, she threw herself backwards on the sofa and smiled at me happily.
“Well, you’ve got everything now. Great work, great sex, great house. And you have a cute butt. It’s like, the perfect life.”
“Yeah, and he still seems to think I’m making some huge sacrifice to be here.”
“He has low self-esteem.” Daphne was getting her masters in public health at Pitt, where she clearly was taking way too many psych classes.
“Brian has low self esteem like Brian has a small dick.”
“He does, Justin! He doesn’t think he deserves you.”
“He doesn’t deserve me.”
“I’m serious.”
I didn’t answer her. I knew what she was saying, even though she was wrong. Brian didn’t have low self-esteem. Brian knew perfectly well that he was hot, smart, successful, and could make me scream in bed. It was just that he didn’t seem to think any of that meant he could also be happy.
“Justin? Are things OK? You sounded really happy, but now I don’t know. Are you freaking out about something?”
I went and sat down in one of the chairs by the fireplace. “I think he’s thinking about the monogamy thing again.” I wasn’t really sure what Brian was thinking, but I had a feeling that was it.
“Thinking about it yes, or thinking about it no?”
“Thinking about it yes.”
“Jesus. Why?”
“Ummm, because I keep begging him to shove his dick up my ass without a condom?”
Daphne blushed. It took a lot to get that to happen, I was glad to see I wasn’t losing my touch. “JUSTIN!!!!!! I’m sure he wouldn’t be monogamous just to fuck you raw.”
“No, I think he wants to do it to make me happy.” I realized I didn’t sound glad about that. “In fact, I think he IS doing it, he just hasn’t admitted it yet.” I hadn’t actually admitted that to myself yet either. Damn, Daph was good.
“Why does that freak you out? He did it before.” Daphne always got all romantic over our wedding that wasn’t.
“Yeah, and he turned into some kind of weird pod version of Brian. I don’t think monogamy is good for him.”
She didn’t say anything for a while. “Isn’t that kind of up to him, though, Justin? If that’s what he wants?”
I got up and flopped down on my stomach on the rug in front of the fireplace. “Well, does he want it, or is he doing it for me?”
“Are you thinking he won’t be able to do it, that he’ll cheat on you?” She sounded doubtful.
I just groaned. “Fuck no. What I’m afraid is that if he promised me he’d fuck only me, and I was crushed in some horrible industrial accident, and before I died I didn’t manage to give him permission to have sex with someone else, he’d never fuck again if he lived to be a hundred.” That was the whole problem.
She didn’t answer and I finally looked up at her. She had this weird expression on her face, kind of like pity. “You’re both freaks, you know that? Total freaks.”
“I know. We are.”
She’d brought pizza and beer and an hour later we were happily stuffing our faces in front of the TV. We were also maybe a little bit stoned, having raided Brian’s stash. But we’d smoked it out by the pool so Lindsay and Mel wouldn’t come in and freak out about it.
“Well, are the kiddies having fun tonight?” It was Brian, standing in the door looking as fucking hot at the end of a long, hard day as he’d looked walking out that morning. Nobody looked as good in a suit as Brian.
He smiled at Daphne. He’d always liked her, partly because she was so loyal to me but mostly because she thought he was six kinds of hotness and didn’t hide it. Brian appreciated loyalty and lust in a person.
“I’m guessing the big greasy pizza box on the kitchen counter is dinner?”
Daphne giggled. “Yeah, Brian, just gnaw on the cardboard, we know you never eat anything with calories anyway.”
“I think that there are enough calories from the grease alone to get me through to morning, but I had planned on something a little more nutritious than that.”
I rolled my eyes. “Daph got you a salad, it’s in the fridge, and there’s cold pizza there too, for later when you’re sneaking a big glob of congealed cheese that you think I won’t notice.”
Brian went upstairs to change, and Daph and I went into the kitchen to get some more beer. When Brian came down, I’d put his chicken Ceasar on a plate and set a beer next to it, and he smiled a little. We all sat down while he ate. He didn’t make any jokes about me being a good little wife, either because he was on his best behavior in front of Daphne or because he intended to torment me later.
“So, Brian, Justin’s studio is amazing. I love it. And all he has to do for it is takeout salad and some cold pizza?”
“No, he has to put out, too.”
“Oh yeah, like he ever needed any extra incentive to put out.”
“Some things are their own reward,” Brian agreed. Daphne giggled.
I tried to decide which one of them I hated more. “You know, Brian, the chances of my putting out tonight just got dramatically lower.”
He laughed and took a swallow of his beer. “Don’t worry, Daphne. He talks tough, but that’s all it is, talk.”
I decided to change the subject. “So, did you figure out your internship yet?” Brian kind of smirked at me when I said that. Me being an expert on internships.
Daphne brightened up. “Yeah, I’m doing it at this clinic downtown that does programs for the management of chronic pain for low income people, it’s going to be great. They have pharmacists and even an acupuncture clinic.”
I rolled my eyes. “Oh, yeah, that’s what someone with constant pain needs, to be stuck with needles.”
She just shrugged. “It helps. I’ve had it.”
I stared at her. “For what?”
“Carpal tunnel.” Daphne had complained about that all last year, while she was finishing up her undergrad degree.
“Now you’re sounding like Ben.”
Brian was just listening, not even really eating his salad. He took a swallow of beer.
Daphne persisted. “You should try it. For your hand.”
I started rubbing my right hand with my left before I realized I was doing it. Then I stopped. “My hand’s fine.” Brian snorted and got up and put his plate in the sink. He’d hardly eaten, but he usually didn’t eat much at night.
Daphne left after we ate, and I went looking for Brian. He was on the sofa with the remote in his hand, but the TV was off. I slid over the back and landed in his lap. I got my arms around his neck and sighed dramatically.
“Now would be a good time.”
“Good time for what?”
“That thing you don’t need a bomb to say.”
“Oh, that.” But his lips twitched in a promising way.
“You can ask me to marry you, but you still have an anxiety attack saying you love me?”
He didn’t say anything for a minute. Then it hit me.
“Was I not supposed to bring up you asking me to marry you?”
“That didn’t turn out so good, I decided we should try something different this time.”
Even though that was totally fucked up, I had to laugh. “Sex is always good.”
He laughed and got his hands into my hair and kissed my jaw. “It is.”
“So, speaking of sex and trying something different, any chance we could renegotiate the prenuptial agreement to include not fucking other guys and sex without condoms?” I seriously had no idea those words were going to come out of my mouth. I froze on his lap, and he kind of froze up too. But when he answered, his tone was light.
“I was hoping we could get a few other clauses in there.”
I laughed, even if it was a little nervous. “Let me guess, you’ve never liked that blowjob language.”
“And I was thinking something about you not driving within a fifteen mile radius of a major metropolitan center.”
“OK, so this is your idea of how to get me to negotiate? Insulting my driving?”
Brian sighed and buried his face in my shoulder. I knew this had been too easy.
“Justin. Seriously. Is that what you want?” His voice was muffled.
“Don’t do what I want.”
“Jesus, can I get that in writing?”
“I mean it, Brian. This is where it all got fucked up before. I want you to do what you want, not what I want.”
“Is that what happened last time?”
“That and you wouldn’t fuck me.”
He lifted up his face and looked at me. “When the hell wouldn’t I fuck you?”
“The night you wanted to just CUDDLE.” The only time in the history of the known universe Brian Kinney had turned down a blowjob.
He put his face back onto my shoulder. “That might possibly have been more metaphorical than literal.”
It took me a minute to figure out what he meant by that.
“You ASSHOLE! You did that on purpose!”
I jumped up and started pacing around the room. I couldn’t believe he did that.
“Did what on purpose?” He was playing innocent.
“You fucking pretended not to want to fuck so I’d talk about that FUCKING Art Forum article. You are such an asshole.” I was seriously pissed.
Brian sat up. “Yeah, so you believed it. You believed that asking you to marry me made my dick soft. Even though the morning after you said yes I fucked you on every horizontal and vertical surface in the loft, and if there were any diagonal surfaces I’d have fucked you on those too. Maybe I’m not the only one who got his brain fucked up by that bomb.”
I sat down on one of the chairs and looked at him.
“Brian. I’m not kidding. This has to stop, you trying to manipulate me.”
“What am I supposed to do when you’re being a complete twat?”
“You’re an articulate guy and I have highly advanced verbal skills. If you think I should do something, you need to persuade me, not manipulate me.”
He ran a hand through his hair. I saw him look over towards the bar, but he stayed where he was. I got up and went back over and sat next to him. He didn’t move, but he didn’t pull away when I put my hand on his thigh.
“OK, enough talking for one night. Your head’s going to explode.”
He groaned. “We talked about our relationship. Now you’re going to want to fuck me.”
“Well, if you say you love me, then you get to fuck me instead.”
“I fucking love you.” And he lunged at me, pushing me down onto the sofa and kissing me hard on my mouth. When he pulled away, I just licked my lips and tried to remember what we’d been talking about.
Brian’s POV
When I got to work the next morning, I was cc’d on an email from Michael asking me, Ted, and Emmett to meet him at Woody’s after work. I groaned. Michael was feeling sentimental and wanted to get the boys together again.
Ted walked in after knocking on the open door. I hated it when he did that. If you’re going to fucking walk in, walk in. If you’re going to knock, wait to be invited. Pick one. “Did you see this email from Michael?”
“I just got it.”
“Well, are you going?”
“What are you, my fucking social secretary?”
“I’ll take that as a yes?” I glared at him and he left, laughing. Never hire friends.
Cynthia came in as I sucked down a mouthful of coffee. She was lugging a huge stack of papers, and I wondered again why I thought it was a good idea to open my own company. Oh yeah: Millions of dollars.
“This is the documentation for the meeting this morning. You can go through it all, or you can just fake it like you usually do.” Fortunately I was brilliant that way.
The meeting was the usual waste of time, but I had lunch with a prospective client who’d flown in from Cleveland, and was in a fairly good mood by the time I got to Woody’s. I got a drink and was shooting pool when a guy I’d seen around gave me an unmistakable look when he walked past me. I ignored him.
“You’re doing it, aren’t you?” It was Ted, rising up from out of nowhere like a swamp creature in the fog. I had no fucking idea what he was talking about.
“Doing what?” I lined up my next shot.
“That fucking Justin without a condom thing that is a word very closely related to MONOTONY.”
I considered my next shot carefully. “Explain to me in what wild perverse alternative universe this is your business?”
“The universe where you brought it up first?”
I walked over to the other side of the table and picked up my glass. “It’s remotely possible that I’m thinking about it.”
“Does Justin know you’re thinking about it?”
I took my shot and sank it. I nodded. Fuck him if he missed it.
He didn’t. “Jesus.”
I sank another shot. “Just keep it to yourself, Theodore.”
“You haven’t told Michael?” This time I missed my shot and waved to Ted to take his turn.
“No. Not going to.” This was the last thing I’d tell Michael.
Ted took his shot and somehow sunk a ball. It was even his own ball. He started to line up his next shot, and I swallowed the last of my drink. He sunk another ball. I wondered if the table was rigged somehow. He missed the next one though, so it must have just been some kind of bizarre fluke.
“Why aren’t you telling him?”
I sunk a ball. “Let’s see. It’s a three letter word beginning with ‘B.’ See if you can guess.”
“Ben?”
“I knew that you could.” I looked at Ted then instead of taking my shot. “Theodore. Do. Not. Discuss. This. With. Michael. I might tell him, but I’ll tell him. Not you. Is there any part of this that you don’t understand?”
“Does this fall under the pain of death clause in my contract?”
“The most painful of pain of death clauses imaginable. It won’t be fast and it won’t be pretty.”
“Everything can be pretty if you just want it to be.” Emmett swooped down on us. I couldn’t figure out how someone who wore clothes exclusively chosen from my personal designer reject pile came fucking close to dressing as well as I did. I kind of missed Emmett’s disco trash days. “What’s not pretty?”
“Brian’s just going over some of the terms of my employment contract.”
“Hold out for the sauna in your private bathroom, Teddy. He can afford it.”
“Hey guys!”
It was Michael. “Well, if it’s not the hostess of our little soiree.” I handed the pool cue to Emmett and steered Michael over to the bar. “Double Chivas on the rocks for me, and whatever Mikey wants.”
He got a beer. Naturally. I was surprised he hadn’t switched to diet Coke like Ted. Of course, we still sold the hard stuff hand over fist at Babylon every night, a thought that cheered me up enough to buy a third Chivas.
And then I remembered Emmett hadn’t joined the ranks of non-fucking, non-drinking, non-drug-doing fags yet, and would probably have some E. Which seemed like a very good idea if I was going to be spending the evening with my oldest friends and not having sex with strangers in the bathroom.
He slipped it to me when Michael and Ted were arguing over the name of a song that was playing, and I let it dissolve a little and then knocked back a little Chivas. And then thought that if Justin were there, he’d make me drink some water. Christ, the little fucker was there even when he wasn’t there.
Emmett had obviously taken mind-reading lessons. “Where’s Justin tonight?”
I took Emmett’s water out of his hand and drank some before handing it back. “I have no idea, amazingly, we don’t swap schedules every morning before going out.” Besides, Justin had been sound asleep with his head shoved under the pillow when I left that morning. For all I knew, he still was.
“Spill it, Emmy Lou. I can see you’re itching to ask me something.”
“Are the Kinney-Taylor nuptials back on?”
“If they ever are, I promise, you’ll be the first wedding planner we contact. But I wouldn’t worry about picking Saturdays in June just yet.”
Ted looked like he’d swallowed something the wrong way, but he kept his mouth shut for once. I didn’t remember if I’d sworn him to general secrecy or just told him not to tell Michael. You really had to be as specific as possible when threatening Theodore.
“Kinney-Taylor nuptials?” It was Michael. “Should I get my best man suit dry-cleaned?”
“Don’t do anything drastic on my account. If Justin and I decide to tie the knot, we’ll probably elope to Massachusetts like all good little faggots and lezzies.”
“You can’t get married in Massachusetts unless you live there. Even though the 14th Amendment specifically states…”
“Jesus fucking christ, Michael. You gave a little sperm to Melanie and now you’re a lawyer? Your poor kid. She’s doomed.”
Since bringing up JR typically derailed Michael from any subject he was otherwise discussing, I figured we’d now get treated to a report on the most perfect child ever born, so I went and got another drink. When I got back, he was happily passing pictures around to Ted and Emmett, who pretended to be enthralled. Since the real thing was still gracing one of my guest rooms, and I heard her gurgling on the baby monitor in the kitchen every morning while I drank my coffee, I ignored the pictures.
By the end of the evening I was pretty drunk and thought about calling Justin to come get me, but that seemed lesbianic so I just got out my cell to call the car service. One of the many inconveniences of moving to the middle of nowhere. If I’d actually moved. One more of the things I was trying not to think about unless forced to.
Michael snapped my phone shut. “I can drive you, Brian.”
“It’s too far.”
“It’ll be OK. C’mon. I’ll bring your car by Kinnetik tomorrow night and you or Ted can drive me home.”
“Yeah, Ted or I can transport you back out to the Stepford village. With the wife and kiddies and the lesbian wives and kiddies.” But I meant all that in a good way.
We were standing outside of Woody’s and I was watching the lights on all the passing cars get all streaky in the rain. Michael put his hand on my arm. “Brian? Where’s the car?”
I thought about that for a minute. I pointed. “I think it’s there, but if not, it’s somewhere else.” And then I laughed and put my hands on Michael’s shoulders. “C’mon, Mikey, let’s play find the car.”
“Brian, your Corvette needs you. Try to focus.”
There were advantages to getting shit-faced with someone who really knew what mattered. “It’s in front of the bath and body shop.”
When we got to the house, Michael walked me to the front door and took my keys away and opened it up. Justin had left the porch light on, and a few lights downstairs, but he was either in his studio or in bed, because the other rooms were dark. Michael started to head for the stairs but I steered us over to the media room. TV and another drink sounded good.
“Wanna watch a movie? I have Spiderman.”
Michael sighed and guided me to the sofa. I fell down on it and bounced. He stood looking down at me. “Should I get Justin to put you to bed?”
I shook my head. “No, Justin won’t do it. He says I have to sleep where I fall. It’s tough love.” I thought that sounded wrong so I clarified. “He says he doesn’t want to be an enabler.” My little walking, talking, breathing, fucking public service announcement.
Michael snorted. “Justin’s not entirely out of his mind on that, but some habits are harder to break than others.” It occurred to me later he didn’t mean my getting wasted, but his bringing me home.
I convinced Michael to put on the Spiderman DVD, and then a little while later I speculated on the possibility he could go get us some food in the kitchen.
“You have food in your kitchen?”
“Yes. Justin lives here now. And Mel and Lindsay and the kids are here. The kitchen is completely stuffed with food. There’s even…” I lowered my voice … “Cap'n Crunch.”
When Mikey came back with food, Justin was with him. He didn’t seem at all pissed, and even sat down with us and ate popcorn and argued with Michael about the movie. I think I fell asleep, because when I woke up, everything was really quiet. I sat up and saw them standing in the doorway talking in low voices. I listened but I couldn’t hear what they were saying.
“Hey.” They turned around and looked at me.
Michael smiled. “I’m heading out, Brian, I’ll come by Kinnetik with the car tomorrow, I’ll call you before I come.”
I got up and gave him a big hug, and he patted my back and then hugged Justin and grabbed his jacket and left.
Justin slipped his arm around me. “Want to go upstairs?”
“I thought I had to sleep where I fell?” It was one of the things he’d told me once, that he wouldn’t be like Michael.
He shrugged. “If you can make it to the bed, you can fall there as easy as anywhere.”
I did manage to get upstairs and strip off my clothes and crawl under the covers. Justin came in a few minutes later and turned off the lights and took off his clothes and got in with me. He didn’t seem mad at all, and he snuggled up to me just like he always did. I tried to remember why I was worried about that, but I couldn’t. And then I fell asleep.
Justin’s POV
I wished Brian didn’t always have to fuck himself up to figure out what he wanted to do about shit, but he did. And I was glad Michael was there to get him home, so when I found him in the kitchen making popcorn in the microwave at midnight, I decided a night of TV and junk food didn’t sound so bad. And Brian was sort of adorable when he was half-drunk, half-high, and getting carbed-up at night. I didn’t tell him I’d melted half a cube of butter onto the popcorn, either.
Brian passed out before the movie was over, but Michael and I watched it until the end. Michael’d seen it about fourteen times already, but that’s what he did with movies he liked. I think Brian had seen One Eyed Jacks at least twenty times. Michael and I were making a plan to get together and talk about Rage when Brian woke up.
He was kind of cute even if he was totally fucked up, so I brought him upstairs and curled up with him and went to sleep.
I woke up with Brian kneeling next to the bed playing with my hair. I blinked at him and he gave me a little smile and stuck his tongue in his cheek.
I scooted away and let him slip in next to me, wrapping my arms and legs around him while he scrunched himself into the warm spot I’d been lying in. He touched his forehead to mine, and slid his hands onto either side of my face and kissed me, a soft little morning kiss. I let it turn into something more, and then he broke away and just looked into my eyes. He was twisting his lips around that way he did when he was nervous, but his body where it was twining with mine, his long legs and his warm arms, felt relaxed. He smiled a little and kissed me again, and then smooshed my nose with his.
I couldn’t help smiling. “Hey.”
He kissed me again. “I ummm, I want to try that thing.” His lips turned in again, and this time I could feel some tension in his body, at least in his arms.
“OK.” I paused for a minute. “Could you be more specific?”
“I want us to…” and he dropped a little kiss on my forehead … “go three months…” and he was twisting my hair with his fingers, but gently … “without fucking other guys …” and then he pushed my hair back off my face with his right hand and cupped the back of my neck with his left … “and take an HIV test…” he kissed me again, softly, and his lips were dry… “and if everything’s OK, you know…” he nuzzled my neck … “I want to fuck you without a condom.”
Some things are hard to grasp ten seconds after waking up. This was one of them. I just sort of lay there blinking, with my hands on his upper arms and my head tucked under his chin.
Brian bent his legs and pushed mine apart, sliding his folded knees in between mine and pulling my hips up and in towards him with his hands. My left leg was lying over his waist, and I worked my right leg between his body and the mattress. We were still lying side by side, facing each other, our crotches tight together, my legs wrapped around him. He kept pulling me in closer, and nuzzling my hair and face and neck.
My first instinct was to ask if he was sure, but then I thought about how I hate the second guessing thing when he does it to me. And how I said no the first time he asked me to marry him. And the look on his face when I did.
So then my second instinct was to throw my arms around his neck and cry and tell him I loved him, which would have had two definite disadvantages, those being, one, Brian would have fucking hated it and two, I’d have looked like a lovesick teenager, which I was kind of trying to get away from.
So I just looked into his eyes and smiled at him. And pressed a kiss on his mouth and said, “I want that too.”
Continued here...