SOMETIMES ONLY A STARBUCKS LATTE WILL DO
Title: Sometimes Only a Starbucks Latte Will Do
Written By: sonofabiscuit77
Timeline: Post 513
Rating: PG13
Warnings: Angst, humour
Summary: I was definitely in for a big gold star when I told my shrink Dad and I were running the fucking marathon together, she was always going on at me about spending "quality time" with my father which I always responded by retorting: "You wouldn't say that if you knew him."
Author's Notes: This is the third fic in the 19 year old Gus universe stuff I've written before: The Lamest Most Half-Assed Plan in the Universe and The Most Boring New Year's Eve Party Ever both written for previous qaf_challenges. This fic also totally works as a standalone.
Once again, thanks and kudos to singlewoman for a fantastic beta. You rock chica! And to _alicesprings for putting it all together.
Oh, and for the purposes of this fic, the New York Marathon is in September.
Marathon Men
Part One
Gus' POV
I was woken up by the sound of my phone buzzing relentlessly from somewhere on the ground. I opened my eyes, where in the fuck was I? Suddenly realising simultaneously that I was naked and that there was another naked body - complete with long blond hair lying beside me, I remembered... Oh yeah. Amy Grant. Back of the net, as my British friend Jacob liked to say, (not that I know what the fuck that means, but it sounds cool).
Meanwhile, my phone had stopped ringing only to start up again, whoever it was wasn't going to give up so I picked it up.
"Yuh?"
"I hope you don't answer your phone like that all the time."
Great. Dad. Just what I needed. And when the fuck did he and Justin get back to town?
"Wha-?"
"I'm entering myself for this year's marathon and I want you to run it with me. What do you say?"
What the fuck?
"If you say yes I'll hang up and leave you alone."
"Yes."
He hung up. I dropped my phone back on the floor and buried myself back under the covers. Five minutes later I was asleep.
*******
Six hours later I was safely ensconsed at the kitchen table at home. None the worse for my adventures the previous night (excepting my hangover from hell), watching my Mom scooping hash browns, sausages and eggs onto a plate. Since she'd been seeing this new woman, Janice, she'd been in an ususually good mood (most of the time).
She deposited my breakfast on the table and I flashed her one my best good-son smiles as a thank-you. Sometimes living at home can be an advantage. Sometimes.
She smiled back at me and kissed my cheek sloppily, turning to take her seat, "Oh, I almost forgot - your father and Justin called me this morning."
"Yeah?"
"They had a wonderful time. Justin was telling me all about it. They went all over by the sounds of things, Europe, Asia, even Russia - Moscow and St. Petersburg. Oh, I've always wanted to go there... just imagine - surrounded by all that amazing history and beauty..."
I tuned her out for a while. I was so not interested in Dad and Justin's honeymoon adventures, I was bound to hear about it all from Justin soon anyway.
"...I have to say I was quite surprised that he'd registered you both for the marathon - of course, I thought registration closed months ago but trust Brian to know someone on the inside who..."
Woah! Back up a minute. What the fuck?
"What?" Fork half poised in front of my mouth, "What are you talking about Mom?"
"It's all right honey. I think it's great that you agreed. And it'll be good for the both of you to spend more time together - you'll be training a lot of course, 26 miles is not exactly a walk in the park."
"Mom," I spoke firmly, laying my fork down beside my plate, "I have no idea what you're talking about, I'm not running the marathon."
"Oh," she looked slightly surprised for a moment, then her face broke into an amused smile, "well in that case you should call your father and tell him that because he's already registered both your names."
Shit. I got quickly to my feet and grabbed for the phone.
"Dad?" I demanded as soon as I heard someone pick up.
"No. He's not here. It's me."
"Justin. What's all this shit about Dad and me running the fucking marathon?"
"Oh that." He sounded amused, the asshole. "Yeah, Brian's got it in his head that he's going to run the New York marathon later this year and he wants you to run with him. He told me you'd agreed. He's already spoken to the promoters and registered you both."
"WHAT?" I practically screamed. "I so did not agree to it! I haven't even spoken to him since you guys got back!"
"Oh, well he told me you did. I think it was early this morning, I don't know, I was still in bed."
But... shit! I was remembering now: Amy Grant's doormroom... me.... my phone going off... answering it... Dad's voice... getting rid of him...
Shit! The conniving fucker. He really had no shame.
"You remembering now?" asked Justin.
"Yeah," I sighed woefully and sank into a nearby chair. "But, I really really don't want to do this. Justin, would you tell him? Would you tell him that..."
"Gus."
"What?"
"Before he went out he told me to tell you that he'd see you tomorrow morning at six a.m. for your first training session. Sorry." He hung up.
Six? Six fucking a.m.? Six fucking a.m. on a Sunday morning?
I was so utterly and completely fucked.
********
Of course Dad turned up at six a.m., barging into my room when I was still half asleep. Pulling my duvet off me with a huff of annoyance, "Why the fuck aren't you ready?"
"Because I'm not fucking going!" I retorted trying to grab the duvet back from him. "You tricked me!"
He grinned them, looking immensely pleased with himself, "Yeah. Well that's what you get when you stay up all night drinking and fucking."
"You're such a hypocrite. Like you haven't done that thousands of times."
He shrugged, still completely amused at his own "wit", "Just get dressed Gus. I've got a conference call at eight."
He stalked out my room still carrying my duvet. I wondered briefly if other kids have to bear this sort of abuse from their parents and got out of bed.
********
Outside it was cold. He led me down a few blocks, there were a suprising number of other runners (or as I was calling them in my head - idiots) out and about despite the freezing cold. I'd seen some of them before when I'd come back from a club late sometimes, sneering at them as I stumbled home, drunk off my ass. And now I was one of them. Jesus.
Dad didn't talk as we ran, which was kind of normal for us. We never talked much - Justin was the one who did most of the talking, Dad mostly made sarcastic supposedly witty remarks and Justin and I just let him. After a few blocks we paused for a moment and he turned to me, quirking his eyebrows.
"You okay?"
"Yeah," I nodded breathlessly, pleased to see that he was panting as much as I was.
He smiled suddenly - quick and sarcastic and reached out an arm to pat my shoulder, "You'll have to tell your shrink about this - this father-son bonding? You might get a big gold star."
I pushed his hand away but he just smirked and we set off again. He was probably right about my shrink thing. I was definitely in for a big gold star when I told her we were running the fucking marathon together, she was always going on at me about spending "quality time" with my father which I always responded by retorting: "You wouldn't say that if you knew him."
"You should quit smoking," he told me between pants with, and get this - a completely serious expression on his face.
"Yeah, well you should've asked Justin to do it with you."
"Justin runs like a girl."
"Does he?" I frowned, trying to remember if I'd ever seen Justin run before.
"Yeah."
********
We ended up at his place and as we rode the elevator on up to his and Justin's penthouse loft, he turned to me with a smug smile, "Well, I think that went okay, don't you?"
I nodded feebly, my insides felt shaken up and the muscles in my legs were burning with unaccustomed use.
In the apartment, he ignored me and headed directly for the bathroom. I walked to the refrigerator and removed a bottle of water, downing it in one long thirsty drag; Dad had totally bogarted the water during our run.
"Hey - you guys have a nice run?" Justin entered the kitchen holding a stack of magazines in his hand, looking annoyingly cheerful for this time in the morning.
I glared at him, "No. And why are you up? You're never up this early."
"Jet lag."
"Oh right. Well, it sucked. I'm not going again."
"Good luck with telling him that. He's completely fixated on this marathon thing. It's just like the Liberty Ride all over again..."
"Huh?"
"Never mind." He grinned quickly, "Ancient history." Yeah, I bet ancient was the apt word. He dropped one of the magazines onto the table in front of me, "Page 64. Society section. There's a write-up on the wedding and a picture. Your dad looks hot. I, however, look like an evil gay munchkin." I picked up the magazine, beginning to open it, "And now I'm going to join Brian in the shower." He left the room with a final quick smirk in my direction.
Ugh, what kind of a fucked-up world is it where my middle-aged father has more sex than I do?
I turned to page 64; there was some boring ass-licking stuff about Justin's last opening and Dad's business shit. The journalist mentioning them as the fourth most influential same-sex couple in the city. Who the fuck decided this shit? Dad was probably already devising a strategy to take out the other three couples. I glanced at the photos: I guess Dad did look alright (for an old guy); like me he always photographed well, unlike Justin, who was right about the evil gay munchkin thing. For the first time that morning I cracked a smile.
********
Justin's POV
"Justin?"
I jumped and turned around. Gus was leaning against my studio door. It had been a few days since I'd last seen him - after his and Brian's first "training session", and according to Brian, he'd been avoiding his phone calls since then. One guess why he was here now...
"Don't you have a Drama class at this time?"
"No that was last semester," he answered with forced airiness which obviously meant he was lying. I decided to overlook it this time, after all it wasn't like I'd never cut class back in the day.
"What's that supposed to be?" He waved one hand towards the canvas I was currently working on.
"What does it look like to you?"
He shrugged, "A car?"
I grinned, pleased, "Yeah. Exactly. I can't believe you saw that. We'll make an Art connoisseur of you yet." He wrinkled his nose slightly and I laughed, "It's supposed to be Brian's jeep." I gestured loosely towards the blur of dark black and orange in the centre of the canvas. "The one my Dad fucked up when he found out about the two of us. And this bit here -" I pointed towards a blur of greenish brown, "this is the vette he had afterwards. I'm thinking of doing something representational - a kinda retrospective of our lives - but through cars."
"Oh," he nodded. "That might be cool. What're you gonna call it?"
"At the moment In Cars. What do you think of that for a title?"
He shrugged again, "Kinda lame."
I laughed and moved towards the deep sink in the corner of the studio to wash my hands, I wasn't going to get any more work done now, "Anyway, what are you doing here? If you came to try and convince me to talk to your father about the marathon, then you're wasting your time."
"But his assistant's already called me about it!" I could hear the note of despair in his voice. "She's setting up a training program for us and she needed to know which days I had early class so she could fit it into Dad's schedule!" To be honest, I was very unsurprised by that news. It was such a Brian thing to do. "You have to help me Justin - you wouldn't believe what it took for me not to tell her to fuck off - even though it's not her fault she's works for a crazy guy!"
"Gus..."
"But you can convince him not to make me do it," he pleaded. "He listens to you. You two are, like, married now anyway!"
I shrugged. Truthfully, the whole marriage thing still seemed entirely surreal to me. We'd had the ceremony (which was fabulous of course), and somewhere in the middle of it, we'd made vows which were supposed to bind us together for the rest of our lives. The weird thing about the whole thing hadn't been those vows, as far as I was concerned Brian was it for me and always had been, but the fact that we were now just like everyone else: married...
Meanwhile, Gus had turned the puppy dog eyes on me. Okay, so there may be a tiny fragment of truth in the Brian listens to Justin thing Gus was counting on exploiting but I wasn't going to get involved in this, not when Brian was so set on the idea. As much as I loved Gus, I wasn't his father, Brian was, and if he had this crazy obsessed vision about them running the marathon together in a beautiful father-son Chariots of Fire moment then I wasn't going to question it.
I sighed and turned the tap off, "Look Gus. I'm sorry you're not happy with this arrangement. But I really think, seriously, you should go through with it."
"Why?" he demanded, puppy dog eyes immediately vanishing.
"Everything that your father has done since LA last year has been so important - so vital for all of us. But mostly for him." I paused, drying my hands slowly on the ratty towel I keep by the sink, "He's looking after himself, I think he's finally managing to face up to the fact he's not invincible..."
"But surely by running the marathon - it's just another way of him proving that he is still invincible?"
"Yes, maybe, but it's better than proving it by drinking a bottle of Beam a night or working a non-stop 18-hour day, seven days a week?" I tossed the towel aside and crossed the floor, moving towards him. Gus was looking thoughtful as if he was truly considering what I'd just said. "Brian is - he's always needing to compete - to do more, to succeed, be the best. To prove something. It's just the way he is. I used to see him do it back in Pittsburgh with all the guys - proving he was top stud. But then he got too old for that, he grew up... And of course he met me." I smiled smugly at the memory. "So he did it in business. The exact same thing - proving himself the best adman in New York - the best businessman, that's why he's made so much money. Hell, we've both done it!" I grinned, remembering that ridiculous magazine article, "Which must be one of the reasons why we're the fourth most influential same-sex couple in the city."
Gus had moved to stand in front of some of my older unfinished canvasses I'd stacked up against one of the walls. He didn't look up as he spoke, "Okay, whatever, but I just don't get why I have to run it with him too? He wants to do it - fine! Why can't I support him from the sidelines?"
"Because he needs you. He wants you to run it together. I don't know - he sees it as a father-son thing. Something to bring you together." I paused for a moment, remembering Brian's words to me up on the roof at our New Year's Eve Party: I make these resolutions. You know the ones - to not work so fucking hard, to spend more time with Gus, and to devote more time to us - to you and me, but somewhere along the line it always gets fucked up... Brian could never do anything quietly. He couldn't just take Gus to a basketball game, come to think of it, Gus wasn't even that into basketball anyway and Brian hated it, but the point remained. Brian couldn't just hang out with his son - oh no, it had to be something big, something spectacular, something dramatic... hence the fucking New York Marathon. I guess he figured that there was nothing like 26 miles of sheer hell (not to mention the hours and hours of pre-training required) to bring two people together.
I watched Gus move away to stare out the window. He seemed to be giving in. Beneath all the bravado, belligerence and shitty attitude, Gus was a good kid. He'd never had it easy, fuck no. What with Lindsey and Mel's break-up years ago, leaving Canada and coming here to New York; Lindsey's subsequent marriages to Andrew and then to Mary (the gender change would fuck up any kid even one as sex savvy as Gus); and on top of all that the constant drama of Brian and me and our never-ending soap opera, he hadn't had it easy... And Brian wondered why he'd been seeing a therapist since he was seventeen.
"Gus?" I prompted him. He was standing, gazing out the window, his face hidden and the sun silhouetting his tall form. Looking at him from this distance, I was struck, as I so often was, by how much he looked like his father.
And then he turned back to face me and Brian was gone... Instead Gus was back - in full brat-attack: "Oh Christ - okay then! Okay, I'll do it. But you owe me - you seriously owe me Justin."
*******
The following night, Brian and I had Lindsey, Gus and Lindsey's new girlfriend Janice over for dinner. Linds had been freaking out about the whole thing for the past week. She seemed to be worried that once Janice met Brian and me, she'd head for the hills (can't imagine why she'd think that) and had primed us on the subjects we were and weren't allowed to talk about: the latter list being a lot longer than the former. Anyway, things were going well and Brian was on his best behaviour until half-way through the main course when Janice asked Gus the question which never fails to piss him off:
"Are you dating anyone at the moment Gus?"
"No."
"What? A handsome smart young college student like you?" continued Janice, evidently oblivious to the giant hole she was digging herself into. She seemed unusually mellow for one of Lindsey's girlfriends and apparently she was some sort of writer which was a departure for Lindsey. Her girlfriends (as opposed to her boyfriends) usually fell into the Mel Type A category - i.e. attractive (from my limited perspective), intelligent, ruthless and argumentative. They also all, without exception, took an immediate dislike to Brian - a dislike that was always mutual. "No girlfriend? Boyfriend?" she added.
"My son doesn't do girlfriends or boyfriends, he doesn't believe in relationships," interjected Lindsey, turning to Janice with a conciliatory smile.
"And who could blame me with such great role models as you, Dad and Mel before me?" retorted Gus hedging into forbidden topics of conversation territory.
"Sonnyboy's right. He's too fucking young for that shit."
Directing Brian a pointed glare, Lindsey turned to me with a smile of fake sweetness. "Justin - how old were you when you and Brian first got together?"
"Seventeen."
"You were seventeen?" Janice asked me, surprised. I suppressed an eye roll and smiled at her in my friendliest way. Why was everyone always so fascinated by this shit? I'm surely not the only person to have met their Significant Other (God, I loved using that term - it pissed Brian off so royally, though I guess I could technically call him my husband now - which was weird) at seventeen? What about all those freaks in the South who married their sixteen year old cousins - or were those trashy talk shows lying to us? "You must have been together for a very long time?" Brian almost choked on his spring water as she said that and I wrinkled my nose - was she insinuating I looked old? That new anti-aging cream was obviously a waste of fucking money.
Instead, ever the polite and graceful host (one of us has to be) I masked my irritation with my best starry-eyed look: "We've been together almost twenty years. And every one of them has been filled with such joy and happiness and love - like you'd never believe Janice. Haven't they darling?"
I turned to Brian who returned my wide-eyed look of adoration with a sardonic twist of his mouth. "Oh yes, sheer bliss, Sunshine."
I got up then to fetch more wine - I really needed it. Meeting new people was such an effort, particularly when they were other people's dates. To be honest, I didn't know how Lindsey managed it, ever since she had finally broken up with Mary (about three years ago) she seemed to have been dating someone different every month. I'd barely been on a proper date my entire life, but on the scant occasions I had (when Brian and I had been on one of our breaks), I'd loathed it. All that time wasted pretending to be interested in someone, listening to their boring life stories and their even more boring tales of relationship woe... when you just ended up fucking them and never seeing them again anyway.
"Need some help there... darling?"
I looked up, Brian was depositing some plates in the sink and had come to stand directly behind me while I attempted to open the bottle of wine with our state-of-the-art, impossible-to-use corkscrew. "No," I answered shortly.
He stretched out one arm to encircle me as he grabbed hold of the bottle, bringing his body up to press against my back and his chin down to rest on my shoulder. "I know I should find your retardedness when it comes to working all kinds of modern machinery a turn-off, but it's strangely hot," he observed as he worked the corkscrew effortlessly.
"I'm not retarded! It's your fucking annoying insistence on buying overpriced shit!" I gestured to the contraption, "If we had a normal $5 corkscrew like normal people I wouldn't have just corked a $150 bottle of red wine!"
Brian laughed and pushed the now uncorked bottle away, "You didn't cork it. Luckily I've just rescued it from that fate."
"Hmm," I murmured, feeling my annoyance dissipate as he lowered his face to mine for the inevitable kiss. I felt his tongue in my mouth and shifted closer to him, my hands going up to frame his face, his arms pulling me tighter against his body... We kissed, slowly, perfectly, our matching erections pressing against each other. "How much longer before they leave?" I murmured when we finally broke apart.
"At least another two hours."
I groaned and pulled away. "You go back, take the wine. I'm going to stay here until my erection disappears."
"Just think about Linds and Janice going down on each other. It just worked for me."
"Shit, you are so disgusting."
He laughed and walked away. During our interminable wait at Heathrow airport for our connection to Moscow I'd read this book by some uber-literary gay British writer. It was mainly dull reading but one line had particularly stuck with me when I'd read it: "The sight of him from behind could still startle a little noise from him, half grunt, half gasp, of lust and admiration. It was love's clear thrilled focus on its object in a blurred irrelevant field." I'd looked up at that moment and seen Brian across the crowded terminal standing and reading the American newspapers at one of the airport newsstands... The Queen of England could have been standing right next to him (okay, unlikely considering she was now bedridden) but my eyes would still have been drawn to him, they still would've found him and only him, before anyone else. It was exactly what the author had written: love's clear thrilled focus on its object in a blurred irrelevant field.
As I watched him walk back into the dining room carrying the wine, I could still feel it. It had been almost twenty years and I could still feel it: that lust... admiration... love... which turned everything and everyone around him into white noise. I smiled to myself and watched his retreating back, he may be nearly forty-nine but there was no one who could wear a pair of jeans like Brian.
*******
Gus' POV
After the first week, our Training Program started for real when Dad brought me to his gym and introduced me to: "Hey! I'm Kenton and I'll be your Marathon Coach!"
"Hi," I returned weakly as he eyed me with a patronizing look. Like all personal trainers, he was a lump of solid muscle and of course he was totally queer. He then started to show us these stretching exercises which seemed to consist of him thrusting his ass in the air, shouting: "Running the marathon is a state of mind!"
"Five years ago I'd have taken him into the steam room and fucked the shit out of him," commented Dad to me (inevitably), eyeing Kenton's ass as he continued thrusting it our way.
"Well if you do it now, I'll tell Justin. You guys are supposed to be married, remember?"
Dad shook his head with a look of disdain, "Since when did my kid become such a prude?"
I rolled my eyes. Only he could equate being a prude with not wanting to hear about your father's disgusting sex life.
Kenton finished doing his exercises and bounded to his feet, jogging on the spot and waving enthusiastically at us to follow him which we did with much less enthusiasm. An hour later, he made the fatal mistake of referring to Dad as being "in the over fifties age group" to my great amusement. Ha! Two hours later, Dad fired him. Double ha!
Unfortunately some of Kenton's teachings seemed to have rubbed off on him as I discovered during one of our runs when he informed me that I should be giving up alcohol from now on.
"Um, you're not serious are you?"
"Of course I am."
"Look, just because you had to give up drinking doesn't mean that I have to. It's totally unfair. I've already had to give up smoking."
"Gus," he was using his incredibly annoying patient voice, "you want to do this? You want to complete the marathon in September don't you?" I nodded, we'd come this far, there was no fucking way we weren't going to do it now - that was one thing we both agreed on. "Well then you're going to have to make some sacrifices."
"I'm not giving up alcohol," I repeated stubbornly. "Just imagine what you'd've said if someone had asked you to stop drinking when you were a college student?"
He looked at me for a moment then smiled suddenly, "Point taken."
We were nearing the end of the run, turning the corner into his and Justin's street. We ran along the sidewalk, speeding up as we usually did for the last few blocks. We were maybe a block and a half away from his and Justin's apartment, when it happened...
Woosh!
We both shuddered to a halt.
The air seemed to be vibrating around us. My ears were ringing, the pounding of the blood loud and deafening in my head.
And then I could hear voices, people screaming, car alarms...
Dad's hand was gripping my shoulder, my entire body trembling. I looked up at him, his face had paled and I could feel his fingers digging into my flesh hard enough to leave bruises.
"Dad?" My voice sounded like a scratchy weird echo in my deafened ears.
Above us and around us, dark swathes of black and grey smoke were drifting, coiling up into the sky.
"Dad? Was that - was that a bomb?"
No answer. He took off, sprinting away. I felt a shiver gather at the base of my spine, I swallowed and flexing my fingers into tight fists, I ran after him.
*********
Part Two
Justin's POV
I got up a few minutes after Brian left intent on putting in some more work on In Cars I'd felt a rush of strange mad inspiration this morning, but now I was downstairs sitting in front of the half-finished canvas any feelings of creativity seemed to have disappeared. I got to my feet, pacing towards the windows distractedly. I rested my forehead against the glass and stared, I was high up enough to see the sun's rays glinting off the tall Midtown skyscrapers and I squeezed my eyes shut, feeling the warmth on my face. Suddenly I wanted to be outside too and grabbing my old paint-spattered sweater and keys, I left the studio. I was in the mood for a tall full-fat triple latte with extra cinnamon sprinkles.
The line in Starbuck's was long. I glanced irritably at my watch: 7.35am. I was an idiot. I'd just walked into the morning pre-subway latte/espresso commuter rush. Brian and Gus would be back by now and if I didn't get a fucking move on I was going to miss out on a morning blow-job from a deliciously sweaty Brian. I felt my dick begin to stir and I peered round the fat wheezy guy in front of me. Naturally there were only two people working the tills and one of them seemed to be a trainee who had to ask for her colleague's help on every single fucking transaction.
I was stirring sugar into my latte when I heard it…
A huge deafening explosion.
I froze. For a moment, Starbucks was silent, the only sound that fucking atrocious piped-in jazz music they'd been abusing their customers' ears with for over 30 years.
And then… noise.
Lots of noise.
Screams, shouts, car alarms. Everyone dashed for the door, the fat guy who was in the line in front of me colliding solidly with me as we both pushed our way out.
Outside, there were people crowding out of coffee shops, buildings, cars… all standing and staring at the same thing…
A cloud of thick dark grey smoke gathering ominously in the street a couple of blocks down from here…
"Someone call 911!"
I glanced around me. This was not happening. This was some freaky sort of dream. This was one of my PTSD flashbacks to the Babylon bomb.
This couldn't be real.
I was frozen, rooted to the spot. Beside me, I could hear the fat wheezy guy on his cell-phone: "An explosion. Yeah. Leonard Street. There's smoke, I can see fire. Yeah, that's right..."
Leonard Street?
Our street.
Mine and Brian's.
Brian...
Clutching my latte in my hand, I stumbled in the road. There was no traffic. All the cars had stopped. Their passengers spilling into the road...
I was a zombie... following the crowd towards the billowing smoke...
Please, no, please God, no. Please let them have done five miles instead of three, please, no… Please let them have stopped for a break… please God…
I pushed my way through the crowd... eyes stinging in the smoke and dust.
A heavy hand on my back: "Get back Sir!"
A cop.
"Leonard? Which building on Leonard Street? I live… I live there."
Please, no, please... please God…
He looked down at me, I could see it - the sympathy in his eyes: "Number 22. Now, please, move back Sir. We're evacuating this block."
I didn't hear the rest.
Number 22.
22, Leonard Street.
Our apartment.
Mine and Brian's.
Brian...
I felt the latte slip from my grip, the badly affixed lid falling off...
Hot scalding milk drenching my jeans... burning my skin...
I felt nothing.
**********
Gus' POV
"Dad! Dad!"
My throat felt sore and gritty. I was coughing and coughing, the smoke and dust choking my mouth, throat, nose... my eyes streaming. Where the fuck was Dad?
It was chaos. It was like bomb devastation on TV. Like those news reports from the Middle East. People were stumbling out of buildings around me, cars had stopped in the middle of the road and were honking at each other. People running around shouting and screaming… and in the middle of it I'd lost Dad.
"Dad!" I practically fucking screamed the word out. My throat tearing over the word. I fell into the street, following the familiar but unfamiliar landmarks of Dad's and Justin's block, everything covered in smoke, blinding me, my ears still ringing from the blast...
And then I saw him.
He was sprawled on the ground, like he'd just collapsed... like he'd been shot... and he was staring at something...
I looked up, following the direction of his gaze: Oh my God… it was his building, his fucking building... I could see flames now, their heat reflecting against my face. Oh my God. It was on fire, it was really on fire. Where the fuck were the fire-fighters?
My joints felt loose and panicky, the blood draining from my face as I took in the crumbling facade. It was hot, so fucking hot. I could see people on the upper floors leaning out the windows, gasping for air and screaming... screaming for help... No, I wasn't going to think about that, I wasn't going to think about Dad going out for our run, leaving Justin in bed... Oh God. I tore my eyes away, my stomach was churning, I felt sick...
I turned back to Dad. "Dad? Dad! Get up! We should - we should move. It's not safe." I pulled at his arm.
"No, no, no, no… NO!"
He pushed me away, barely seeing me. I could feel the tears running freely down my face now as I got back to my feet, leaning over him, trying to raise him to his feet. He was stiff, a dead weight.
I squeezed my eyes shut, dragging him away, dragging him backwards. Gasping for breath. Coughing and spluttering... I pulled at him... I could feel his body shuddering, shaking... trying to get away from me. A blank feeling of terror was overcoming me, I wanted my Mom. I wanted Mom to appear now and say it's okay, don't worry sweetheart, it's okay.
"Br- Brian? Oh my God… Brian!"
I froze.
Justin.
Emerging from the smoke, behind me. His expression as blank as Dad's, his face red with tears, soot and dust.
"Brian?" He stepped forward and grabbed onto him, collapsing to the ground beside him. Tears running down his face. "I thought… I thought you were in there…"
Dad seemed to come alive again and lunged at him, smothering him with his arms. I could hear him either sobbing or choking into Justin's shoulder. Justin raised his head to look at me, a wide delirious smile through his tears. "Oh God, Gus…" He grabbed a fistful of my t-shirt in his hand, "Gus..."
"I thought you were dead." I wanted to shake him.
Justin seemed to laugh, his voice shaky and unreal as he raised his tear-stained face to me, "I was in Starbucks, they had this useless trainee, the line was really long…"
He dropped his hand from mine, grabbing onto Dad again. They were staring at each other, their eyes locked on only each other. I looked away, suddenly embarrassed by the blatant naked need in their eyes.
When I turned back to look at them, they were kissing.
*******
Mum leaped on me as we staggered through our front door. Her face was a mess of red-eyes, tears and ugly blotchy patches.
"Gus! Oh Gus! Oh my baby!" She enveloped me in her arms and began to sob into my shoulder. "Why the fuck didn't you answer your phone?" She raised her head, her voice hysterical as she glared at Dad.
"I had it switched off," answered Dad. "Glad to see you're so happy we're alive."
"Oh God! You fucking - you asshole!" she cried, dissolving into yet more sobs and collapsing into Dad's arms.
Dad and Justin disappeared somewhere and I slumped into my chair at the kitchen table, Mom leaning over me, pouring me coffee which I sipped gratefully. I felt drained, exhausted. My chest ached and my eyes stung. I still couldn't believe that I'd just seen Dad and Justin's apartment building blown up. Everything they owned… all of Justin's work, his studio… all their possessions… it was all just gone.
Mom slipped into the chair beside me and took my hand. Her eyes were brimming with tears.
"Mom, I was just - if we'd been faster - if we'd set off five minutes earlier... we'd have been in there Mom..."
"Don't think about it." Dad's voice.
We both started and looked up as he came into the room. He still looked like shit, but a calmer version of shit, not the blank-faced zombie who'd sprawled in the street and screamed out his grief.
"Are you okay Sonnyboy?" He rested his hand momentarily on my head, giving my hair a small ruffle just like he used to do years ago when I was a kid.
I swallowed and nodded at him. Mom got up and passed an arm round him, a new swell of tears in her eyes, "How's Justin?"
"Okay. He's getting cleaned up." He pulled away from her, "Any coffee?"
She nodded, "Would Justin like some?"
"Yeah."
He took the coffee mug from her - his own mug, the one I'd gotten him years ago that read World's Best Dad. Yeah, I'd been young when I'd bought that.
"Dad?"
"What?"
"What're you gonna do - about... about it?"
"Fix it. What else am I going to do?" He sighed and began emptying the pockets of his sweatpants on the kitchen table: cell-phone, wallet, keys, two condoms (two?), and lube.
"You go running with all that in your pockets?" asked Mom, a smile edging tentatively through her runny eyes.
"Got to be prepared for any eventuality Linds." He turned on his cell: "You have 34 new messages.".
********
An hour later, we'd all had showers and were grouped around the TV. I was squashed into a chair next to Mom, her arm tightly wrapped around me. I felt... I didn't know how I felt, everything felt weirdly normal. I could hear Dad talking on the phone to his poor assistant Alison (the one I'd nearly reamed out over the training schedule thing); and he sounded like Dad again, a fully-restored, no-bullshit Dad again.
"What? No, fuck the insurance, Theodore's dealing with that. No, you've got something much more important to do. Are you listening? Right, well, get your ass down to Armani, ask for Bertrand. Tell him it's for me. I need it all - the whole fucking collection, pants, suits, shirts…"
I tuned Dad's fashion-crisis phone call out. He and Justin had been forced to borrow my clothes and while Dad looked okay in a pair of designer pants and a shirt he'd bought me and I'd never worn, all my pants had so far been far too long for Justin.
"When you're done there, go to Saks - ask for Lester, I need casual stuff, and tell him Justin needs some clothes too. He knows his size, he knows what he likes... Oh and tell him I want some shoes - that new Gucci line... "
"What the fuck happened to your legs?"
Dad had paused in the middle of his call. I raised my eyes. Justin was standing in the doorway wearing a pair of my old baggy shorts (obviously the only thing that fit) and an even older shirt. He looked like someone's retarded cousin. But that wasn't what Dad was staring at. There were small patches of blotchy red on the front of Justin's shins, marks that looked like burns.
He shrugged embarrassedly and looked at Mom, "Linds - do you have some ice?"
She nodded and got up to go into the kitchen. "What happened? I didn't think you were anywhere near it when… you know?" Mom came back into the room then and began to crouch over Justin, pressing a bag of ice over the burns as he winced.
"I wasn't. This was a tall triple full-fat latte with cinnamon sprinkles."
I stifled a snort of laughter, "You burned yourself with coffee?"
"I was in shock. I just dropped it."
I turned back to the TV, they were still broadcasting pictures of Dad and Justin's devastated building: "A fatal explosion in a luxury Tribeca apartment building has left 13 people dead and many more injured. Though authorities are still unsure what caused the deadly blast, early indications suggest a possible terrorist attack… Our reporter, Peter Cockroft, is on the scene in downtown Manhattan, where local residents and workers are still reeling from the after-effects of this horrific tragedy..."
"What the fuck would terrorists be doing blowing up your building?" I turned to Justin who was gingerly shifting in his position on the couch, holding the bag of ice with one hand. "Hey, maybe one of your neighbours was a mole or something? I bet it was that weirdo who lives in the basement."
"You realise that weirdo is probably dead?"
"Not if he's the mole. Unless he was a suicide bomber of course."
"Gus!" Mom glanced at me reprovingly.
Dad looked up from his call, "The fucking media in this country are all idiots. It wasn't a terrorist attack. It was a gas leak. Ted had it from a contact in the Fire Department."
"A gas leak?"
"Ted has a contact in the Fire Department?"
Mom's and Justin's questions came out at once, Dad paused, smirking at them, "Yes, Linds, a gas leak. And yes Sunshine, apparently they're fuck buddies."
"Well, I just hope they don't send us to war over a gas leak," Mom was saying seriously shaking her head in her fucking Republicans voice.
But I wasn't interested in that: "Uncle Ted has a fuck buddy in the Fire Department?"
*********
Justin's POV
The burns on my legs were throbbing. I'd already gone through two packs of ice and the third was defrosting rapidly against my skin. The TV was on low in the background, pictures and more pictures of our former home. Gus and Linds had disappeared somewhere but I could still hear Brian talking on his cell. He was standing by the window and I could see him raising his left hand to his head, fingers running through his hair, the glint of his ring, reflecting the sunlight streaming through the window. Love's clear thrilled focus on its object in a blurred irrelevant field. I smiled to myself. Although I still didn't believe that we needed rings or marriage to prove that we loved each, I loved to see him wearing his ring - that blatant potent symbol of partnership - of ownership, of belonging...
"What are you smiling at?"
He turned to look at me. "You," I answered.
"Me? You're the one who looks like a middle-aged refugee from a stoner music video."
"I don't look middle-aged."
He smiled quickly, "No, I guess you don't."
I closed my eyes and heard him finish up his call.
"You okay?"
I opened my eyes; he was perching on the end of the couch looking at me.
"I guess."
He nodded and slid onto the couch, placing my legs over his lap, he took the ice from my hand and held it in place himself.
"I was smiling about this," I picked up his left hand, stroking one finger over his wedding band. "I like seeing you wear it. Reminds me that you're all mine. Not that I need to be reminded." He rolled his eyes in that let's-indulge-Justin way and pulled his hand out of my grasp. I raised my own left hand, staring at it. "They're about all we've got left. Now everything else has been either burnt to the ground or blown to the sky."
"Don't think about it. We can replace it all. It's just stuff."
I huffed out a short bitter sigh, "Yeah, just stuff."
I closed my eyes, I felt exhausted. The day seemed to have lasted forever and it was only - what time was it now....? Barely midday? It seemed unreal. I kept expecting Brian to tell me that our visit to Linds and Gus was over and that the car service had arrived to take us home... And so we'd go home: we'd walk into the apartment, into the hall with its dark hardwood floor, into the living room area and maybe we'd stop there and fuck on the white leather couch... right under Ugly Naked Guy... Or maybe we'd manage to hold out till we got to the bedroom and collapsed on the bed... that bed that had witnessed hundreds, no thousands of our fucks... and we'd fuck there: hard and fast, or slow and sweet, whatever... under the latest light-fitting, the framed wedding picture looking at us from my nightstand... and that painting of mine that Brian had bought on my first New York show staring at us from the other wall - his favourite painting - one of my best works, the one that was about him, about him and me, about us, because they always were about us...
"Justin..."
I snapped my eyes open, "Do you remember that photograph Daph took of you and me at the Art Show? The first picture of us together? I kept that in a drawer - in my nightstand... And that stupid sketch I did of you for it, the one you bought? That stuff - it meant something and now it's gone. That canvas I was working on, In Cars, I'm not going to be able to start it again. I can't just replicate it. It's gone. It's all gone. Everything. It's finally beginning to sink in now Brian - we've lost everything."
"Not everything."
The words hit me with the blunt force of memory. Not everything...
He leaned towards me, the pack of ice sliding to the floor, my arms went around his back and our mouths found each other. When we kissed I was back on the steps of Woody's and Liberty Avenue was celebrating...
"You never go out that early." He pulled away from me, our eyes locked on each other.
"I just wanted a latte."
"You always use the machine in the kitchen."
"Sometimes only a Starbucks latte will do."
He laughed, an almost touch of hysteria in the sound, "Fuck, they should use that as a fucking ad slogan. I could write it up for them. I'd do it for free." He cupped the back of my head with one hand, pulling me hard against his chest, his fingers threading through my hair, "Justin, if..."
I raised my head quickly, stretching out one hand, cutting him off, "Brian. Don't. Please. Don't say it."
"Okay, but you know, right?"
"I know."
*********
Epilogue
Gus' POV
The night before Marathon Day, Mom cooked Dad and me a special celebratory meal. Well, it wasn't really that special or celebratory as we were on this stupid-ass diet, one of the many reasons I was so looking forward to finally getting to the ATM (After The Marathon) part of my life.
I was in my room, attempting to study, well actually, I was idly flicking through my favourite "wank mag" - (another of my British friend, Jacob's phrases), wondering if I'd have time to jerk one out before Dad and Justin arrived when I heard the intercom go: evidently the answer was no, I wouldn't.
I sighed and pushed the only slightly sticky and crinkly magazine under my mattress and went to greet my father/running-partner/bane-of-my-life and Justin.
"What?" I demanded as I saw the wide smiles on everyone's faces.
"The new place is ready!" grinned Justin. "We'll finally be able to move out of the Soho Grand. God, I can't fucking wait!"
Yeah, Dad and Justin had been living at the Soho Grand during their recent homeless period and to hear them both bitch and moan about it you'd have thought they were staying at some sleazy motel full of pimps and whores, instead of a luxury boutique hotel with prize-winning bartenders and a Michelin-starred chef. Personally, I could live in a hotel forever - just think of the room service. And honestly, if they hadn't been so fucking demanding about the work on the new place, they'd've been moved in ages ago... I'm just saying.
Anyway, they were buying this amazingly expensive Chelsea townhouse in the Historical District but apparently the insurance payout, not to mention the compensation from the gas company had been huge. Justin had also gotten shit loads of publicity for having lost so much of his work in the blast but it had also meant that the value of his work had risen - so really... what goes around comes around, right?
"Isn't it great news Gus?" laughed Mom, opening a bottle of champagne - that I wasn't allowed to drink.
"Yeah, great," I muttered unenthusiastically, trying not to notice that Dad had one hand down the back of Justin's pants.
"It's such a pity Janice couldn't make it tonight," Mom was still blathering. I left them and went into the living room to watch some TV.
"So you want to hear about your Dad's latest project?"
I looked up, Justin had followed me into the living room and was leaning over the back of the couch, holding a glass of champagne.
"What?" A silent feeling of dread was seeping over me. There were so many hideous possibilities...
"Niamh Cleary - as in Senator Niamh Cleary, is stepping down due to health reasons, she's not running in the next election. She called Brian and suggested that he should run for her seat."
"She thinks Dad should run for the Senate? Like, as a New York senator?" I sat up in shock. I knew Dad was friendly with Senator Cleary, he'd been involved on her last two campaigns, but this was crazy.
"What do you think about a future internship in Washington?" Dad had come to stand beside Justin and was looking down at me with an immensely smug smile.
Justin turned to him with a teasing grin, "You haven't won yet."
"Details, Sunshine, just details," he grinned and kissed him hard on the mouth. "What do you think Sonnyboy? You ready to be the son of a US senator?"
I groaned and fell back into the couch. Why hadn't I been born to a normal family?
Written By: sonofabiscuit77
Timeline: Post 513
Rating: PG13
Warnings: Angst, humour
Summary: I was definitely in for a big gold star when I told my shrink Dad and I were running the fucking marathon together, she was always going on at me about spending "quality time" with my father which I always responded by retorting: "You wouldn't say that if you knew him."
Author's Notes: This is the third fic in the 19 year old Gus universe stuff I've written before: The Lamest Most Half-Assed Plan in the Universe and The Most Boring New Year's Eve Party Ever both written for previous qaf_challenges. This fic also totally works as a standalone.
Once again, thanks and kudos to singlewoman for a fantastic beta. You rock chica! And to _alicesprings for putting it all together.
Oh, and for the purposes of this fic, the New York Marathon is in September.
Marathon Men
Part One
Gus' POV
I was woken up by the sound of my phone buzzing relentlessly from somewhere on the ground. I opened my eyes, where in the fuck was I? Suddenly realising simultaneously that I was naked and that there was another naked body - complete with long blond hair lying beside me, I remembered... Oh yeah. Amy Grant. Back of the net, as my British friend Jacob liked to say, (not that I know what the fuck that means, but it sounds cool).
Meanwhile, my phone had stopped ringing only to start up again, whoever it was wasn't going to give up so I picked it up.
"Yuh?"
"I hope you don't answer your phone like that all the time."
Great. Dad. Just what I needed. And when the fuck did he and Justin get back to town?
"Wha-?"
"I'm entering myself for this year's marathon and I want you to run it with me. What do you say?"
What the fuck?
"If you say yes I'll hang up and leave you alone."
"Yes."
He hung up. I dropped my phone back on the floor and buried myself back under the covers. Five minutes later I was asleep.
*******
Six hours later I was safely ensconsed at the kitchen table at home. None the worse for my adventures the previous night (excepting my hangover from hell), watching my Mom scooping hash browns, sausages and eggs onto a plate. Since she'd been seeing this new woman, Janice, she'd been in an ususually good mood (most of the time).
She deposited my breakfast on the table and I flashed her one my best good-son smiles as a thank-you. Sometimes living at home can be an advantage. Sometimes.
She smiled back at me and kissed my cheek sloppily, turning to take her seat, "Oh, I almost forgot - your father and Justin called me this morning."
"Yeah?"
"They had a wonderful time. Justin was telling me all about it. They went all over by the sounds of things, Europe, Asia, even Russia - Moscow and St. Petersburg. Oh, I've always wanted to go there... just imagine - surrounded by all that amazing history and beauty..."
I tuned her out for a while. I was so not interested in Dad and Justin's honeymoon adventures, I was bound to hear about it all from Justin soon anyway.
"...I have to say I was quite surprised that he'd registered you both for the marathon - of course, I thought registration closed months ago but trust Brian to know someone on the inside who..."
Woah! Back up a minute. What the fuck?
"What?" Fork half poised in front of my mouth, "What are you talking about Mom?"
"It's all right honey. I think it's great that you agreed. And it'll be good for the both of you to spend more time together - you'll be training a lot of course, 26 miles is not exactly a walk in the park."
"Mom," I spoke firmly, laying my fork down beside my plate, "I have no idea what you're talking about, I'm not running the marathon."
"Oh," she looked slightly surprised for a moment, then her face broke into an amused smile, "well in that case you should call your father and tell him that because he's already registered both your names."
Shit. I got quickly to my feet and grabbed for the phone.
"Dad?" I demanded as soon as I heard someone pick up.
"No. He's not here. It's me."
"Justin. What's all this shit about Dad and me running the fucking marathon?"
"Oh that." He sounded amused, the asshole. "Yeah, Brian's got it in his head that he's going to run the New York marathon later this year and he wants you to run with him. He told me you'd agreed. He's already spoken to the promoters and registered you both."
"WHAT?" I practically screamed. "I so did not agree to it! I haven't even spoken to him since you guys got back!"
"Oh, well he told me you did. I think it was early this morning, I don't know, I was still in bed."
But... shit! I was remembering now: Amy Grant's doormroom... me.... my phone going off... answering it... Dad's voice... getting rid of him...
Shit! The conniving fucker. He really had no shame.
"You remembering now?" asked Justin.
"Yeah," I sighed woefully and sank into a nearby chair. "But, I really really don't want to do this. Justin, would you tell him? Would you tell him that..."
"Gus."
"What?"
"Before he went out he told me to tell you that he'd see you tomorrow morning at six a.m. for your first training session. Sorry." He hung up.
Six? Six fucking a.m.? Six fucking a.m. on a Sunday morning?
I was so utterly and completely fucked.
********
Of course Dad turned up at six a.m., barging into my room when I was still half asleep. Pulling my duvet off me with a huff of annoyance, "Why the fuck aren't you ready?"
"Because I'm not fucking going!" I retorted trying to grab the duvet back from him. "You tricked me!"
He grinned them, looking immensely pleased with himself, "Yeah. Well that's what you get when you stay up all night drinking and fucking."
"You're such a hypocrite. Like you haven't done that thousands of times."
He shrugged, still completely amused at his own "wit", "Just get dressed Gus. I've got a conference call at eight."
He stalked out my room still carrying my duvet. I wondered briefly if other kids have to bear this sort of abuse from their parents and got out of bed.
********
Outside it was cold. He led me down a few blocks, there were a suprising number of other runners (or as I was calling them in my head - idiots) out and about despite the freezing cold. I'd seen some of them before when I'd come back from a club late sometimes, sneering at them as I stumbled home, drunk off my ass. And now I was one of them. Jesus.
Dad didn't talk as we ran, which was kind of normal for us. We never talked much - Justin was the one who did most of the talking, Dad mostly made sarcastic supposedly witty remarks and Justin and I just let him. After a few blocks we paused for a moment and he turned to me, quirking his eyebrows.
"You okay?"
"Yeah," I nodded breathlessly, pleased to see that he was panting as much as I was.
He smiled suddenly - quick and sarcastic and reached out an arm to pat my shoulder, "You'll have to tell your shrink about this - this father-son bonding? You might get a big gold star."
I pushed his hand away but he just smirked and we set off again. He was probably right about my shrink thing. I was definitely in for a big gold star when I told her we were running the fucking marathon together, she was always going on at me about spending "quality time" with my father which I always responded by retorting: "You wouldn't say that if you knew him."
"You should quit smoking," he told me between pants with, and get this - a completely serious expression on his face.
"Yeah, well you should've asked Justin to do it with you."
"Justin runs like a girl."
"Does he?" I frowned, trying to remember if I'd ever seen Justin run before.
"Yeah."
********
We ended up at his place and as we rode the elevator on up to his and Justin's penthouse loft, he turned to me with a smug smile, "Well, I think that went okay, don't you?"
I nodded feebly, my insides felt shaken up and the muscles in my legs were burning with unaccustomed use.
In the apartment, he ignored me and headed directly for the bathroom. I walked to the refrigerator and removed a bottle of water, downing it in one long thirsty drag; Dad had totally bogarted the water during our run.
"Hey - you guys have a nice run?" Justin entered the kitchen holding a stack of magazines in his hand, looking annoyingly cheerful for this time in the morning.
I glared at him, "No. And why are you up? You're never up this early."
"Jet lag."
"Oh right. Well, it sucked. I'm not going again."
"Good luck with telling him that. He's completely fixated on this marathon thing. It's just like the Liberty Ride all over again..."
"Huh?"
"Never mind." He grinned quickly, "Ancient history." Yeah, I bet ancient was the apt word. He dropped one of the magazines onto the table in front of me, "Page 64. Society section. There's a write-up on the wedding and a picture. Your dad looks hot. I, however, look like an evil gay munchkin." I picked up the magazine, beginning to open it, "And now I'm going to join Brian in the shower." He left the room with a final quick smirk in my direction.
Ugh, what kind of a fucked-up world is it where my middle-aged father has more sex than I do?
I turned to page 64; there was some boring ass-licking stuff about Justin's last opening and Dad's business shit. The journalist mentioning them as the fourth most influential same-sex couple in the city. Who the fuck decided this shit? Dad was probably already devising a strategy to take out the other three couples. I glanced at the photos: I guess Dad did look alright (for an old guy); like me he always photographed well, unlike Justin, who was right about the evil gay munchkin thing. For the first time that morning I cracked a smile.
********
Justin's POV
"Justin?"
I jumped and turned around. Gus was leaning against my studio door. It had been a few days since I'd last seen him - after his and Brian's first "training session", and according to Brian, he'd been avoiding his phone calls since then. One guess why he was here now...
"Don't you have a Drama class at this time?"
"No that was last semester," he answered with forced airiness which obviously meant he was lying. I decided to overlook it this time, after all it wasn't like I'd never cut class back in the day.
"What's that supposed to be?" He waved one hand towards the canvas I was currently working on.
"What does it look like to you?"
He shrugged, "A car?"
I grinned, pleased, "Yeah. Exactly. I can't believe you saw that. We'll make an Art connoisseur of you yet." He wrinkled his nose slightly and I laughed, "It's supposed to be Brian's jeep." I gestured loosely towards the blur of dark black and orange in the centre of the canvas. "The one my Dad fucked up when he found out about the two of us. And this bit here -" I pointed towards a blur of greenish brown, "this is the vette he had afterwards. I'm thinking of doing something representational - a kinda retrospective of our lives - but through cars."
"Oh," he nodded. "That might be cool. What're you gonna call it?"
"At the moment In Cars. What do you think of that for a title?"
He shrugged again, "Kinda lame."
I laughed and moved towards the deep sink in the corner of the studio to wash my hands, I wasn't going to get any more work done now, "Anyway, what are you doing here? If you came to try and convince me to talk to your father about the marathon, then you're wasting your time."
"But his assistant's already called me about it!" I could hear the note of despair in his voice. "She's setting up a training program for us and she needed to know which days I had early class so she could fit it into Dad's schedule!" To be honest, I was very unsurprised by that news. It was such a Brian thing to do. "You have to help me Justin - you wouldn't believe what it took for me not to tell her to fuck off - even though it's not her fault she's works for a crazy guy!"
"Gus..."
"But you can convince him not to make me do it," he pleaded. "He listens to you. You two are, like, married now anyway!"
I shrugged. Truthfully, the whole marriage thing still seemed entirely surreal to me. We'd had the ceremony (which was fabulous of course), and somewhere in the middle of it, we'd made vows which were supposed to bind us together for the rest of our lives. The weird thing about the whole thing hadn't been those vows, as far as I was concerned Brian was it for me and always had been, but the fact that we were now just like everyone else: married...
Meanwhile, Gus had turned the puppy dog eyes on me. Okay, so there may be a tiny fragment of truth in the Brian listens to Justin thing Gus was counting on exploiting but I wasn't going to get involved in this, not when Brian was so set on the idea. As much as I loved Gus, I wasn't his father, Brian was, and if he had this crazy obsessed vision about them running the marathon together in a beautiful father-son Chariots of Fire moment then I wasn't going to question it.
I sighed and turned the tap off, "Look Gus. I'm sorry you're not happy with this arrangement. But I really think, seriously, you should go through with it."
"Why?" he demanded, puppy dog eyes immediately vanishing.
"Everything that your father has done since LA last year has been so important - so vital for all of us. But mostly for him." I paused, drying my hands slowly on the ratty towel I keep by the sink, "He's looking after himself, I think he's finally managing to face up to the fact he's not invincible..."
"But surely by running the marathon - it's just another way of him proving that he is still invincible?"
"Yes, maybe, but it's better than proving it by drinking a bottle of Beam a night or working a non-stop 18-hour day, seven days a week?" I tossed the towel aside and crossed the floor, moving towards him. Gus was looking thoughtful as if he was truly considering what I'd just said. "Brian is - he's always needing to compete - to do more, to succeed, be the best. To prove something. It's just the way he is. I used to see him do it back in Pittsburgh with all the guys - proving he was top stud. But then he got too old for that, he grew up... And of course he met me." I smiled smugly at the memory. "So he did it in business. The exact same thing - proving himself the best adman in New York - the best businessman, that's why he's made so much money. Hell, we've both done it!" I grinned, remembering that ridiculous magazine article, "Which must be one of the reasons why we're the fourth most influential same-sex couple in the city."
Gus had moved to stand in front of some of my older unfinished canvasses I'd stacked up against one of the walls. He didn't look up as he spoke, "Okay, whatever, but I just don't get why I have to run it with him too? He wants to do it - fine! Why can't I support him from the sidelines?"
"Because he needs you. He wants you to run it together. I don't know - he sees it as a father-son thing. Something to bring you together." I paused for a moment, remembering Brian's words to me up on the roof at our New Year's Eve Party: I make these resolutions. You know the ones - to not work so fucking hard, to spend more time with Gus, and to devote more time to us - to you and me, but somewhere along the line it always gets fucked up... Brian could never do anything quietly. He couldn't just take Gus to a basketball game, come to think of it, Gus wasn't even that into basketball anyway and Brian hated it, but the point remained. Brian couldn't just hang out with his son - oh no, it had to be something big, something spectacular, something dramatic... hence the fucking New York Marathon. I guess he figured that there was nothing like 26 miles of sheer hell (not to mention the hours and hours of pre-training required) to bring two people together.
I watched Gus move away to stare out the window. He seemed to be giving in. Beneath all the bravado, belligerence and shitty attitude, Gus was a good kid. He'd never had it easy, fuck no. What with Lindsey and Mel's break-up years ago, leaving Canada and coming here to New York; Lindsey's subsequent marriages to Andrew and then to Mary (the gender change would fuck up any kid even one as sex savvy as Gus); and on top of all that the constant drama of Brian and me and our never-ending soap opera, he hadn't had it easy... And Brian wondered why he'd been seeing a therapist since he was seventeen.
"Gus?" I prompted him. He was standing, gazing out the window, his face hidden and the sun silhouetting his tall form. Looking at him from this distance, I was struck, as I so often was, by how much he looked like his father.
And then he turned back to face me and Brian was gone... Instead Gus was back - in full brat-attack: "Oh Christ - okay then! Okay, I'll do it. But you owe me - you seriously owe me Justin."
*******
The following night, Brian and I had Lindsey, Gus and Lindsey's new girlfriend Janice over for dinner. Linds had been freaking out about the whole thing for the past week. She seemed to be worried that once Janice met Brian and me, she'd head for the hills (can't imagine why she'd think that) and had primed us on the subjects we were and weren't allowed to talk about: the latter list being a lot longer than the former. Anyway, things were going well and Brian was on his best behaviour until half-way through the main course when Janice asked Gus the question which never fails to piss him off:
"Are you dating anyone at the moment Gus?"
"No."
"What? A handsome smart young college student like you?" continued Janice, evidently oblivious to the giant hole she was digging herself into. She seemed unusually mellow for one of Lindsey's girlfriends and apparently she was some sort of writer which was a departure for Lindsey. Her girlfriends (as opposed to her boyfriends) usually fell into the Mel Type A category - i.e. attractive (from my limited perspective), intelligent, ruthless and argumentative. They also all, without exception, took an immediate dislike to Brian - a dislike that was always mutual. "No girlfriend? Boyfriend?" she added.
"My son doesn't do girlfriends or boyfriends, he doesn't believe in relationships," interjected Lindsey, turning to Janice with a conciliatory smile.
"And who could blame me with such great role models as you, Dad and Mel before me?" retorted Gus hedging into forbidden topics of conversation territory.
"Sonnyboy's right. He's too fucking young for that shit."
Directing Brian a pointed glare, Lindsey turned to me with a smile of fake sweetness. "Justin - how old were you when you and Brian first got together?"
"Seventeen."
"You were seventeen?" Janice asked me, surprised. I suppressed an eye roll and smiled at her in my friendliest way. Why was everyone always so fascinated by this shit? I'm surely not the only person to have met their Significant Other (God, I loved using that term - it pissed Brian off so royally, though I guess I could technically call him my husband now - which was weird) at seventeen? What about all those freaks in the South who married their sixteen year old cousins - or were those trashy talk shows lying to us? "You must have been together for a very long time?" Brian almost choked on his spring water as she said that and I wrinkled my nose - was she insinuating I looked old? That new anti-aging cream was obviously a waste of fucking money.
Instead, ever the polite and graceful host (one of us has to be) I masked my irritation with my best starry-eyed look: "We've been together almost twenty years. And every one of them has been filled with such joy and happiness and love - like you'd never believe Janice. Haven't they darling?"
I turned to Brian who returned my wide-eyed look of adoration with a sardonic twist of his mouth. "Oh yes, sheer bliss, Sunshine."
I got up then to fetch more wine - I really needed it. Meeting new people was such an effort, particularly when they were other people's dates. To be honest, I didn't know how Lindsey managed it, ever since she had finally broken up with Mary (about three years ago) she seemed to have been dating someone different every month. I'd barely been on a proper date my entire life, but on the scant occasions I had (when Brian and I had been on one of our breaks), I'd loathed it. All that time wasted pretending to be interested in someone, listening to their boring life stories and their even more boring tales of relationship woe... when you just ended up fucking them and never seeing them again anyway.
"Need some help there... darling?"
I looked up, Brian was depositing some plates in the sink and had come to stand directly behind me while I attempted to open the bottle of wine with our state-of-the-art, impossible-to-use corkscrew. "No," I answered shortly.
He stretched out one arm to encircle me as he grabbed hold of the bottle, bringing his body up to press against my back and his chin down to rest on my shoulder. "I know I should find your retardedness when it comes to working all kinds of modern machinery a turn-off, but it's strangely hot," he observed as he worked the corkscrew effortlessly.
"I'm not retarded! It's your fucking annoying insistence on buying overpriced shit!" I gestured to the contraption, "If we had a normal $5 corkscrew like normal people I wouldn't have just corked a $150 bottle of red wine!"
Brian laughed and pushed the now uncorked bottle away, "You didn't cork it. Luckily I've just rescued it from that fate."
"Hmm," I murmured, feeling my annoyance dissipate as he lowered his face to mine for the inevitable kiss. I felt his tongue in my mouth and shifted closer to him, my hands going up to frame his face, his arms pulling me tighter against his body... We kissed, slowly, perfectly, our matching erections pressing against each other. "How much longer before they leave?" I murmured when we finally broke apart.
"At least another two hours."
I groaned and pulled away. "You go back, take the wine. I'm going to stay here until my erection disappears."
"Just think about Linds and Janice going down on each other. It just worked for me."
"Shit, you are so disgusting."
He laughed and walked away. During our interminable wait at Heathrow airport for our connection to Moscow I'd read this book by some uber-literary gay British writer. It was mainly dull reading but one line had particularly stuck with me when I'd read it: "The sight of him from behind could still startle a little noise from him, half grunt, half gasp, of lust and admiration. It was love's clear thrilled focus on its object in a blurred irrelevant field." I'd looked up at that moment and seen Brian across the crowded terminal standing and reading the American newspapers at one of the airport newsstands... The Queen of England could have been standing right next to him (okay, unlikely considering she was now bedridden) but my eyes would still have been drawn to him, they still would've found him and only him, before anyone else. It was exactly what the author had written: love's clear thrilled focus on its object in a blurred irrelevant field.
As I watched him walk back into the dining room carrying the wine, I could still feel it. It had been almost twenty years and I could still feel it: that lust... admiration... love... which turned everything and everyone around him into white noise. I smiled to myself and watched his retreating back, he may be nearly forty-nine but there was no one who could wear a pair of jeans like Brian.
*******
Gus' POV
After the first week, our Training Program started for real when Dad brought me to his gym and introduced me to: "Hey! I'm Kenton and I'll be your Marathon Coach!"
"Hi," I returned weakly as he eyed me with a patronizing look. Like all personal trainers, he was a lump of solid muscle and of course he was totally queer. He then started to show us these stretching exercises which seemed to consist of him thrusting his ass in the air, shouting: "Running the marathon is a state of mind!"
"Five years ago I'd have taken him into the steam room and fucked the shit out of him," commented Dad to me (inevitably), eyeing Kenton's ass as he continued thrusting it our way.
"Well if you do it now, I'll tell Justin. You guys are supposed to be married, remember?"
Dad shook his head with a look of disdain, "Since when did my kid become such a prude?"
I rolled my eyes. Only he could equate being a prude with not wanting to hear about your father's disgusting sex life.
Kenton finished doing his exercises and bounded to his feet, jogging on the spot and waving enthusiastically at us to follow him which we did with much less enthusiasm. An hour later, he made the fatal mistake of referring to Dad as being "in the over fifties age group" to my great amusement. Ha! Two hours later, Dad fired him. Double ha!
Unfortunately some of Kenton's teachings seemed to have rubbed off on him as I discovered during one of our runs when he informed me that I should be giving up alcohol from now on.
"Um, you're not serious are you?"
"Of course I am."
"Look, just because you had to give up drinking doesn't mean that I have to. It's totally unfair. I've already had to give up smoking."
"Gus," he was using his incredibly annoying patient voice, "you want to do this? You want to complete the marathon in September don't you?" I nodded, we'd come this far, there was no fucking way we weren't going to do it now - that was one thing we both agreed on. "Well then you're going to have to make some sacrifices."
"I'm not giving up alcohol," I repeated stubbornly. "Just imagine what you'd've said if someone had asked you to stop drinking when you were a college student?"
He looked at me for a moment then smiled suddenly, "Point taken."
We were nearing the end of the run, turning the corner into his and Justin's street. We ran along the sidewalk, speeding up as we usually did for the last few blocks. We were maybe a block and a half away from his and Justin's apartment, when it happened...
Woosh!
We both shuddered to a halt.
The air seemed to be vibrating around us. My ears were ringing, the pounding of the blood loud and deafening in my head.
And then I could hear voices, people screaming, car alarms...
Dad's hand was gripping my shoulder, my entire body trembling. I looked up at him, his face had paled and I could feel his fingers digging into my flesh hard enough to leave bruises.
"Dad?" My voice sounded like a scratchy weird echo in my deafened ears.
Above us and around us, dark swathes of black and grey smoke were drifting, coiling up into the sky.
"Dad? Was that - was that a bomb?"
No answer. He took off, sprinting away. I felt a shiver gather at the base of my spine, I swallowed and flexing my fingers into tight fists, I ran after him.
*********
Part Two
Justin's POV
I got up a few minutes after Brian left intent on putting in some more work on In Cars I'd felt a rush of strange mad inspiration this morning, but now I was downstairs sitting in front of the half-finished canvas any feelings of creativity seemed to have disappeared. I got to my feet, pacing towards the windows distractedly. I rested my forehead against the glass and stared, I was high up enough to see the sun's rays glinting off the tall Midtown skyscrapers and I squeezed my eyes shut, feeling the warmth on my face. Suddenly I wanted to be outside too and grabbing my old paint-spattered sweater and keys, I left the studio. I was in the mood for a tall full-fat triple latte with extra cinnamon sprinkles.
The line in Starbuck's was long. I glanced irritably at my watch: 7.35am. I was an idiot. I'd just walked into the morning pre-subway latte/espresso commuter rush. Brian and Gus would be back by now and if I didn't get a fucking move on I was going to miss out on a morning blow-job from a deliciously sweaty Brian. I felt my dick begin to stir and I peered round the fat wheezy guy in front of me. Naturally there were only two people working the tills and one of them seemed to be a trainee who had to ask for her colleague's help on every single fucking transaction.
I was stirring sugar into my latte when I heard it…
A huge deafening explosion.
I froze. For a moment, Starbucks was silent, the only sound that fucking atrocious piped-in jazz music they'd been abusing their customers' ears with for over 30 years.
And then… noise.
Lots of noise.
Screams, shouts, car alarms. Everyone dashed for the door, the fat guy who was in the line in front of me colliding solidly with me as we both pushed our way out.
Outside, there were people crowding out of coffee shops, buildings, cars… all standing and staring at the same thing…
A cloud of thick dark grey smoke gathering ominously in the street a couple of blocks down from here…
"Someone call 911!"
I glanced around me. This was not happening. This was some freaky sort of dream. This was one of my PTSD flashbacks to the Babylon bomb.
This couldn't be real.
I was frozen, rooted to the spot. Beside me, I could hear the fat wheezy guy on his cell-phone: "An explosion. Yeah. Leonard Street. There's smoke, I can see fire. Yeah, that's right..."
Leonard Street?
Our street.
Mine and Brian's.
Brian...
Clutching my latte in my hand, I stumbled in the road. There was no traffic. All the cars had stopped. Their passengers spilling into the road...
I was a zombie... following the crowd towards the billowing smoke...
Please, no, please God, no. Please let them have done five miles instead of three, please, no… Please let them have stopped for a break… please God…
I pushed my way through the crowd... eyes stinging in the smoke and dust.
A heavy hand on my back: "Get back Sir!"
A cop.
"Leonard? Which building on Leonard Street? I live… I live there."
Please, no, please... please God…
He looked down at me, I could see it - the sympathy in his eyes: "Number 22. Now, please, move back Sir. We're evacuating this block."
I didn't hear the rest.
Number 22.
22, Leonard Street.
Our apartment.
Mine and Brian's.
Brian...
I felt the latte slip from my grip, the badly affixed lid falling off...
Hot scalding milk drenching my jeans... burning my skin...
I felt nothing.
**********
Gus' POV
"Dad! Dad!"
My throat felt sore and gritty. I was coughing and coughing, the smoke and dust choking my mouth, throat, nose... my eyes streaming. Where the fuck was Dad?
It was chaos. It was like bomb devastation on TV. Like those news reports from the Middle East. People were stumbling out of buildings around me, cars had stopped in the middle of the road and were honking at each other. People running around shouting and screaming… and in the middle of it I'd lost Dad.
"Dad!" I practically fucking screamed the word out. My throat tearing over the word. I fell into the street, following the familiar but unfamiliar landmarks of Dad's and Justin's block, everything covered in smoke, blinding me, my ears still ringing from the blast...
And then I saw him.
He was sprawled on the ground, like he'd just collapsed... like he'd been shot... and he was staring at something...
I looked up, following the direction of his gaze: Oh my God… it was his building, his fucking building... I could see flames now, their heat reflecting against my face. Oh my God. It was on fire, it was really on fire. Where the fuck were the fire-fighters?
My joints felt loose and panicky, the blood draining from my face as I took in the crumbling facade. It was hot, so fucking hot. I could see people on the upper floors leaning out the windows, gasping for air and screaming... screaming for help... No, I wasn't going to think about that, I wasn't going to think about Dad going out for our run, leaving Justin in bed... Oh God. I tore my eyes away, my stomach was churning, I felt sick...
I turned back to Dad. "Dad? Dad! Get up! We should - we should move. It's not safe." I pulled at his arm.
"No, no, no, no… NO!"
He pushed me away, barely seeing me. I could feel the tears running freely down my face now as I got back to my feet, leaning over him, trying to raise him to his feet. He was stiff, a dead weight.
I squeezed my eyes shut, dragging him away, dragging him backwards. Gasping for breath. Coughing and spluttering... I pulled at him... I could feel his body shuddering, shaking... trying to get away from me. A blank feeling of terror was overcoming me, I wanted my Mom. I wanted Mom to appear now and say it's okay, don't worry sweetheart, it's okay.
"Br- Brian? Oh my God… Brian!"
I froze.
Justin.
Emerging from the smoke, behind me. His expression as blank as Dad's, his face red with tears, soot and dust.
"Brian?" He stepped forward and grabbed onto him, collapsing to the ground beside him. Tears running down his face. "I thought… I thought you were in there…"
Dad seemed to come alive again and lunged at him, smothering him with his arms. I could hear him either sobbing or choking into Justin's shoulder. Justin raised his head to look at me, a wide delirious smile through his tears. "Oh God, Gus…" He grabbed a fistful of my t-shirt in his hand, "Gus..."
"I thought you were dead." I wanted to shake him.
Justin seemed to laugh, his voice shaky and unreal as he raised his tear-stained face to me, "I was in Starbucks, they had this useless trainee, the line was really long…"
He dropped his hand from mine, grabbing onto Dad again. They were staring at each other, their eyes locked on only each other. I looked away, suddenly embarrassed by the blatant naked need in their eyes.
When I turned back to look at them, they were kissing.
*******
Mum leaped on me as we staggered through our front door. Her face was a mess of red-eyes, tears and ugly blotchy patches.
"Gus! Oh Gus! Oh my baby!" She enveloped me in her arms and began to sob into my shoulder. "Why the fuck didn't you answer your phone?" She raised her head, her voice hysterical as she glared at Dad.
"I had it switched off," answered Dad. "Glad to see you're so happy we're alive."
"Oh God! You fucking - you asshole!" she cried, dissolving into yet more sobs and collapsing into Dad's arms.
Dad and Justin disappeared somewhere and I slumped into my chair at the kitchen table, Mom leaning over me, pouring me coffee which I sipped gratefully. I felt drained, exhausted. My chest ached and my eyes stung. I still couldn't believe that I'd just seen Dad and Justin's apartment building blown up. Everything they owned… all of Justin's work, his studio… all their possessions… it was all just gone.
Mom slipped into the chair beside me and took my hand. Her eyes were brimming with tears.
"Mom, I was just - if we'd been faster - if we'd set off five minutes earlier... we'd have been in there Mom..."
"Don't think about it." Dad's voice.
We both started and looked up as he came into the room. He still looked like shit, but a calmer version of shit, not the blank-faced zombie who'd sprawled in the street and screamed out his grief.
"Are you okay Sonnyboy?" He rested his hand momentarily on my head, giving my hair a small ruffle just like he used to do years ago when I was a kid.
I swallowed and nodded at him. Mom got up and passed an arm round him, a new swell of tears in her eyes, "How's Justin?"
"Okay. He's getting cleaned up." He pulled away from her, "Any coffee?"
She nodded, "Would Justin like some?"
"Yeah."
He took the coffee mug from her - his own mug, the one I'd gotten him years ago that read World's Best Dad. Yeah, I'd been young when I'd bought that.
"Dad?"
"What?"
"What're you gonna do - about... about it?"
"Fix it. What else am I going to do?" He sighed and began emptying the pockets of his sweatpants on the kitchen table: cell-phone, wallet, keys, two condoms (two?), and lube.
"You go running with all that in your pockets?" asked Mom, a smile edging tentatively through her runny eyes.
"Got to be prepared for any eventuality Linds." He turned on his cell: "You have 34 new messages.".
********
An hour later, we'd all had showers and were grouped around the TV. I was squashed into a chair next to Mom, her arm tightly wrapped around me. I felt... I didn't know how I felt, everything felt weirdly normal. I could hear Dad talking on the phone to his poor assistant Alison (the one I'd nearly reamed out over the training schedule thing); and he sounded like Dad again, a fully-restored, no-bullshit Dad again.
"What? No, fuck the insurance, Theodore's dealing with that. No, you've got something much more important to do. Are you listening? Right, well, get your ass down to Armani, ask for Bertrand. Tell him it's for me. I need it all - the whole fucking collection, pants, suits, shirts…"
I tuned Dad's fashion-crisis phone call out. He and Justin had been forced to borrow my clothes and while Dad looked okay in a pair of designer pants and a shirt he'd bought me and I'd never worn, all my pants had so far been far too long for Justin.
"When you're done there, go to Saks - ask for Lester, I need casual stuff, and tell him Justin needs some clothes too. He knows his size, he knows what he likes... Oh and tell him I want some shoes - that new Gucci line... "
"What the fuck happened to your legs?"
Dad had paused in the middle of his call. I raised my eyes. Justin was standing in the doorway wearing a pair of my old baggy shorts (obviously the only thing that fit) and an even older shirt. He looked like someone's retarded cousin. But that wasn't what Dad was staring at. There were small patches of blotchy red on the front of Justin's shins, marks that looked like burns.
He shrugged embarrassedly and looked at Mom, "Linds - do you have some ice?"
She nodded and got up to go into the kitchen. "What happened? I didn't think you were anywhere near it when… you know?" Mom came back into the room then and began to crouch over Justin, pressing a bag of ice over the burns as he winced.
"I wasn't. This was a tall triple full-fat latte with cinnamon sprinkles."
I stifled a snort of laughter, "You burned yourself with coffee?"
"I was in shock. I just dropped it."
I turned back to the TV, they were still broadcasting pictures of Dad and Justin's devastated building: "A fatal explosion in a luxury Tribeca apartment building has left 13 people dead and many more injured. Though authorities are still unsure what caused the deadly blast, early indications suggest a possible terrorist attack… Our reporter, Peter Cockroft, is on the scene in downtown Manhattan, where local residents and workers are still reeling from the after-effects of this horrific tragedy..."
"What the fuck would terrorists be doing blowing up your building?" I turned to Justin who was gingerly shifting in his position on the couch, holding the bag of ice with one hand. "Hey, maybe one of your neighbours was a mole or something? I bet it was that weirdo who lives in the basement."
"You realise that weirdo is probably dead?"
"Not if he's the mole. Unless he was a suicide bomber of course."
"Gus!" Mom glanced at me reprovingly.
Dad looked up from his call, "The fucking media in this country are all idiots. It wasn't a terrorist attack. It was a gas leak. Ted had it from a contact in the Fire Department."
"A gas leak?"
"Ted has a contact in the Fire Department?"
Mom's and Justin's questions came out at once, Dad paused, smirking at them, "Yes, Linds, a gas leak. And yes Sunshine, apparently they're fuck buddies."
"Well, I just hope they don't send us to war over a gas leak," Mom was saying seriously shaking her head in her fucking Republicans voice.
But I wasn't interested in that: "Uncle Ted has a fuck buddy in the Fire Department?"
*********
Justin's POV
The burns on my legs were throbbing. I'd already gone through two packs of ice and the third was defrosting rapidly against my skin. The TV was on low in the background, pictures and more pictures of our former home. Gus and Linds had disappeared somewhere but I could still hear Brian talking on his cell. He was standing by the window and I could see him raising his left hand to his head, fingers running through his hair, the glint of his ring, reflecting the sunlight streaming through the window. Love's clear thrilled focus on its object in a blurred irrelevant field. I smiled to myself. Although I still didn't believe that we needed rings or marriage to prove that we loved each, I loved to see him wearing his ring - that blatant potent symbol of partnership - of ownership, of belonging...
"What are you smiling at?"
He turned to look at me. "You," I answered.
"Me? You're the one who looks like a middle-aged refugee from a stoner music video."
"I don't look middle-aged."
He smiled quickly, "No, I guess you don't."
I closed my eyes and heard him finish up his call.
"You okay?"
I opened my eyes; he was perching on the end of the couch looking at me.
"I guess."
He nodded and slid onto the couch, placing my legs over his lap, he took the ice from my hand and held it in place himself.
"I was smiling about this," I picked up his left hand, stroking one finger over his wedding band. "I like seeing you wear it. Reminds me that you're all mine. Not that I need to be reminded." He rolled his eyes in that let's-indulge-Justin way and pulled his hand out of my grasp. I raised my own left hand, staring at it. "They're about all we've got left. Now everything else has been either burnt to the ground or blown to the sky."
"Don't think about it. We can replace it all. It's just stuff."
I huffed out a short bitter sigh, "Yeah, just stuff."
I closed my eyes, I felt exhausted. The day seemed to have lasted forever and it was only - what time was it now....? Barely midday? It seemed unreal. I kept expecting Brian to tell me that our visit to Linds and Gus was over and that the car service had arrived to take us home... And so we'd go home: we'd walk into the apartment, into the hall with its dark hardwood floor, into the living room area and maybe we'd stop there and fuck on the white leather couch... right under Ugly Naked Guy... Or maybe we'd manage to hold out till we got to the bedroom and collapsed on the bed... that bed that had witnessed hundreds, no thousands of our fucks... and we'd fuck there: hard and fast, or slow and sweet, whatever... under the latest light-fitting, the framed wedding picture looking at us from my nightstand... and that painting of mine that Brian had bought on my first New York show staring at us from the other wall - his favourite painting - one of my best works, the one that was about him, about him and me, about us, because they always were about us...
"Justin..."
I snapped my eyes open, "Do you remember that photograph Daph took of you and me at the Art Show? The first picture of us together? I kept that in a drawer - in my nightstand... And that stupid sketch I did of you for it, the one you bought? That stuff - it meant something and now it's gone. That canvas I was working on, In Cars, I'm not going to be able to start it again. I can't just replicate it. It's gone. It's all gone. Everything. It's finally beginning to sink in now Brian - we've lost everything."
"Not everything."
The words hit me with the blunt force of memory. Not everything...
He leaned towards me, the pack of ice sliding to the floor, my arms went around his back and our mouths found each other. When we kissed I was back on the steps of Woody's and Liberty Avenue was celebrating...
"You never go out that early." He pulled away from me, our eyes locked on each other.
"I just wanted a latte."
"You always use the machine in the kitchen."
"Sometimes only a Starbucks latte will do."
He laughed, an almost touch of hysteria in the sound, "Fuck, they should use that as a fucking ad slogan. I could write it up for them. I'd do it for free." He cupped the back of my head with one hand, pulling me hard against his chest, his fingers threading through my hair, "Justin, if..."
I raised my head quickly, stretching out one hand, cutting him off, "Brian. Don't. Please. Don't say it."
"Okay, but you know, right?"
"I know."
*********
Epilogue
Gus' POV
The night before Marathon Day, Mom cooked Dad and me a special celebratory meal. Well, it wasn't really that special or celebratory as we were on this stupid-ass diet, one of the many reasons I was so looking forward to finally getting to the ATM (After The Marathon) part of my life.
I was in my room, attempting to study, well actually, I was idly flicking through my favourite "wank mag" - (another of my British friend, Jacob's phrases), wondering if I'd have time to jerk one out before Dad and Justin arrived when I heard the intercom go: evidently the answer was no, I wouldn't.
I sighed and pushed the only slightly sticky and crinkly magazine under my mattress and went to greet my father/running-partner/bane-of-my-life and Justin.
"What?" I demanded as I saw the wide smiles on everyone's faces.
"The new place is ready!" grinned Justin. "We'll finally be able to move out of the Soho Grand. God, I can't fucking wait!"
Yeah, Dad and Justin had been living at the Soho Grand during their recent homeless period and to hear them both bitch and moan about it you'd have thought they were staying at some sleazy motel full of pimps and whores, instead of a luxury boutique hotel with prize-winning bartenders and a Michelin-starred chef. Personally, I could live in a hotel forever - just think of the room service. And honestly, if they hadn't been so fucking demanding about the work on the new place, they'd've been moved in ages ago... I'm just saying.
Anyway, they were buying this amazingly expensive Chelsea townhouse in the Historical District but apparently the insurance payout, not to mention the compensation from the gas company had been huge. Justin had also gotten shit loads of publicity for having lost so much of his work in the blast but it had also meant that the value of his work had risen - so really... what goes around comes around, right?
"Isn't it great news Gus?" laughed Mom, opening a bottle of champagne - that I wasn't allowed to drink.
"Yeah, great," I muttered unenthusiastically, trying not to notice that Dad had one hand down the back of Justin's pants.
"It's such a pity Janice couldn't make it tonight," Mom was still blathering. I left them and went into the living room to watch some TV.
"So you want to hear about your Dad's latest project?"
I looked up, Justin had followed me into the living room and was leaning over the back of the couch, holding a glass of champagne.
"What?" A silent feeling of dread was seeping over me. There were so many hideous possibilities...
"Niamh Cleary - as in Senator Niamh Cleary, is stepping down due to health reasons, she's not running in the next election. She called Brian and suggested that he should run for her seat."
"She thinks Dad should run for the Senate? Like, as a New York senator?" I sat up in shock. I knew Dad was friendly with Senator Cleary, he'd been involved on her last two campaigns, but this was crazy.
"What do you think about a future internship in Washington?" Dad had come to stand beside Justin and was looking down at me with an immensely smug smile.
Justin turned to him with a teasing grin, "You haven't won yet."
"Details, Sunshine, just details," he grinned and kissed him hard on the mouth. "What do you think Sonnyboy? You ready to be the son of a US senator?"
I groaned and fell back into the couch. Why hadn't I been born to a normal family?