rhiannonhero (![[info]](http://www.insanejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} rhiannonhero) wrote,@ 2007-12-01 00:24:00 |
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Fic: QaF: Into My Arms: Part Three
:::::
Into My Arms: Part Three
“You leave soon, right?” Justin said over breakfast.
“Yeah, tomorrow morning,” Brian replied, and Belle’s head snapped away from Sesame Street, her big eyes focusing on Brian.
“Why?” she asked, and before Brian could answer, she continued, “Don’t go! Please!”
“It’s okay, Belle,” Justin said. “He’s not going away for good, just for a few days.”
“Why?” she demanded again, and she looked like she better be pleased with the answer.
“For work,” Justin said. “His company needs him.”
Her eyes narrowed suspiciously. “Is that true?”
“Of course it is, honey,” Justin said.
“I can talk for myself,” Brian muttered and Justin held up in hands in surrender. “Belle, I’ll be back soon. Don’t worry. You’re not getting rid of me.”
“Good, because you’re the only one who can be Beast now.”
“I can be Beast,” Justin offered. “Just when Brian is away, of course.”
“No, Daddy, you’re not allowed.”
“Why not?”
“ You’re Daddy and that means I can’t marry you, duh,” Belle said, rolling her eyes in a way that Brian had to admit mimicked his own eye rolls perfectly.
“Oh, right, of course,” Justin said, looking at Brian in amusement.
“I’m going to marry Brian when I grow up,” Belle said, nodding her head happily.
“Your kid’s going to be a wonderful fag hag, honey,” Brian teased.
Justin rolled his eyes.
“What’s a fat hag?” Belle asked.
“A fat lady who wants to be loved by the friends of Dorothy,” Brian replied, preening a little as he spoke.
“Dorothy who?” Belle asked.
“Christ, show the kid The Wizard of Oz like any respectable queer, Justin!”
Justin ignored Brian and said, “Not fat, Belle. The word was fag. Fag is a not very nice word for a gay man, like me and Brian. I’d prefer you didn’t say that word, okay?”
“Gay men love other men and not women,” Belle said solemnly to Brian, using her spoon for emphasis.
Justin went on, “Fag hag means a grown-up lady who prefers the company of gay men.”
“So, they won’t shop unless gay men own the company?” Belle asked.
“Not if they’re smart, they won’t,” Brian agreed.
“No, they like to hang out with gay men,” Justin said, attempting to keep the conversation on track.
“Oh, okay.”
Justin sat back looking self-satisfied, obviously pleased with his parenting prowess. Brian snickered at him until Justin surreptitiously flipped him the bird. Minutes after they both thought the conversation was over, Belle announced. “I want to be a fag hag when I grow up.”
“Don’t worry, Belle,” Brian said, patting her on the head as he stood to leave the table. “It’s your destiny.”
::::
“You know,” Brian said to Justin as they stood outside of Belle’s preschool, having just dropped her off. “I’ve never had a fag hag.”
Justin started walking and Brian fell in beside him. “Um, excuse me? What do you call Lindsay?”
“Me? I call her a muncher, but I can’t speak for you.”
“Yeah, well, I call her your fag hag,” Justin laughed. “Hell, you had a baby with your fag hag.”
“And you didn’t?”
“I never claimed not to have one.” Justin pointed out, and then added thoughtfully. “I’ve got a few, actually. Daph, Simone, and Meg, of course, before she died.”
“Lesbians are not fag hags,” Brian stated. “Thus, I’ve never had one and never needed one.”
“Oh, get over yourself,” Justin said, hitting Brian’s stomach with the back of hand. “You fucked your fag hag in college, and then years later you had a baby with her, just because she eats pussy, nothing changes that.”
“I beg to differ.”
“Beg away. I like it when you beg.”
Brian put on an expression of one who has been mortally wounded. “I beg your pardon, but I have never begged.”
“Keep on telling yourself that, Brian.” Justin pointed north and they headed toward the coffee place that Justin liked to frequent near the gallery that showed his art. “Have you talked to Gus?” Justin asked.
“Yesterday,” Brian replied, then he sighed heavily. “His mother tells me that he’s got a girlfriend.”
“Speaking of pussy,” Justin laughed.
Brian shuddered. “The thought of my son diving into muff will drive me to drink, Sunshine. Let’s not discuss it.”
Justin’s shook his head in amusement as they walked, and Brian bumped his shoulder affectionately. Justin caught Brian’s eye, and Brian took a deep breath and didn’t resist when Justin took hold of his hand, and they walked together, like a couple, down the street, holding hands.
Brian kept his eyes straight ahead, picking up the pace a little, so that he was dragging Justin along slightly behind him. It helped him to still feel in charge of the moment, though he knew it was a tell that Justin would pick up on, and possibly read the wrong way. Still, Justin’s hand in his was warm and right, the palm snug in his own, and Justin’s fingers weren’t too loose or too tight around his own. He realized he was holding Justin’s damaged hand, the one that he’d fought to use again so long again.
He slowed his pace, let Justin right up next to him, and then tucked him under his arm, pulling him close. He lifted Justin’s hand to his lips and kissed it. “Does it still bother you?” he asked.
Justin shook his head. “Well, occasionally, when I don’t get enough rest.”
Brian massaged the hand gently as they walked. “You know, there haven’t been many times in my life that I’ve been as scared as I was that night.”
“Yeah?” Justin whispered, his voice barely audible over the city noises.
“Yeah. There was one other time, about a year after you left, when Babylon was bombed.”
“You called me that night,” Justin reminded him. “To tell me about Michael.”
Brian nodded. It’d been to hear Justin’s voice, actually; he’d needed Justin so badly that night. He’d done little more than cry silently on the phone and Justin had let him. It had been their last phone conversation.
“Michael…” Brian trailed off.
“After we talked, I called Debbie, you know. I almost came home, then, but Debbie told me to stay put. She let me know when he was safe.”
Brian swallowed hard, surprised by the deep well of anger that rushed up and filled him, making it hard for him to see where he was going. Damn Debbie. Fuck her. He’d needed Justin so much….
“Hey, watch it,” Justin said, jerking him back from nearly walking into a car. “We don’t need to talk about this.”
Brian stopped walking, put his hands on Justin’s shoulders and said, “Yes, we do, Sunshine.”
Justin looked terrified and confused but he said, “Okay, then, go on.”
Brian stared into Justin’s eyes, curious and scared, realized he wasn’t breathing, actually neither of them were. He inhaled and the cold air brought tears to his eyes. “I wanted you to come home,” Brian’s voice broke, but he managed to go on, “so much, I almost begged you to come home that night, but I couldn’t. I wish that I had.”
Justin’s face softened even more. “Oh,” he said, not much more than a sharp intake of breath.
“I was so scared that Michael would die, so scared that I’d be left alone. After that night I didn’t call again because,” Brian’s eyes closed and he took a steadying breath.
“It’s all right,” Justin murmured.
“Let me say it,” Brian said. “You said we should talk about shit, so let me fucking talk about it.”
“Okay, fine.”
“I didn’t call again because when you didn’t offer to come home, I knew I’d lost you.”
Justin shook his head, his eyes shining and sad. “Brian, you never lost me. You could have called anytime and asked. I would’ve come.”
“I know.”
“Do you?”
“I think I do.”
Justin lifted onto his toes and Brian held him close, burying his face in Justin’s neck. Brian’s body was tense and he couldn’t let it go, couldn’t force himself to relax in Justin’s arms.
“I love you,” Justin whispered.
Brian squeezed him tight and held on.
::::
“Here, drink this,” Justin said, shoving a coffee mug into Brian’s cold hands. “After your personal episode of Roadside Confessions, I think we could both use some warming up. Next time, save it until we get inside, okay?”
Brian smirked, still tight and uncomfortable from having revealed too much. He wondered why anyone ever said anything to anyone else; self-revelation always engendered in him a period of intense self-loathing during which he wished he’d just kept his mouth shut.
“So, in the spirit of full disclosure,” Justin started.
Brian held up his hand. “I don’t think I can do this right now, Sunshine.”
Justin smiled. “It’s okay, this isn’t a big deal. I just need to tell you that I’ve dragged you over here to take you to the gallery, to see my show.”
“I’d never have guessed,” Brian said, taking a sip of his overpriced latte.
“Simone gave me the keys. They’re closed on Mondays, so we’ll have the place to ourselves.”
“Lindsay will be pissed that you let someone else show your work.”
“Um speaking of,” Justin hesitated and then went on. “Did you tell Lindsay about this? About you being here with me and Belle?”
Brian shrugged. “No.”
“Why not?” Justin asked, eyes narrowing a little.
“It didn’t come up?”
“How could it not come up?”
“Because Lindsay doesn’ t make me hard, Sunshine, you know that,” Brian said.
“Don’t be obtuse.”
“What do you want me to say? I didn’t mention it because it didn’t come up, it isn’t her business, and I didn’t want to go into it with her.”
Justin crossed his arms over his chest and said, “I don’t suppose you might see how that is a huge red flag for me?”
“I spoke to her for less than two minutes before talking to my son!”
“Did you tell Gus?”
Brian looked away.
“I thought not.” Justin sighed and scratched his fingers through his hair. He looked tired again. “I’m sorry, Brian. This isn’t the conversation I wanted to have with you right now. I was supposed to tell you how my show was conceived when Belle was, and how the pieces reflect the strength of life, starting with a single cell, but—I don’t want to tell you that anymore because you’re an asshole.”
Brian sighed. “I’ll call them both right now if it will make you happy.”
“But will it make you happy?”
“Fucking hell, Justin, yes, okay? What do you want me to say? There are no right answers here and you know it.”
“I just want to believe that this is something serious for you, Brian, because it is for me, and it is for Belle.”
Brian got out his phone and Justin tried to bat it out of his hands, but Brian hit the speed dial, keeping it away from Justin. “Lindsay, this is Brian.”
“Brian, is everything okay?” Lindsay’s concern was warm in his ear.
“Yeah, I’m fine. I’m in New York City with Justin and his daughter. I thought you’d want to know.”
"Okay," Lindsay sounded as confused as Brian felt. "That's good?
"Yes. We're…partners. You should know. Tell Mel, tell your postman, tell your fucking boss, tell the world, okay?" Brian looked at Justin pointedly before closing his eyes. “Tell Sonny Boy, too. I’d like him to meet Justin.”
“Tell him yourself,” Lindsay said. “Call him tonight. He’s got news, too.”
“Don’t tell me—he knocked the girlfriend up.”
“Oh, Brian, don’t say things like that! My God! The very idea! And don’t let Mel hear you saying that kind of thing, she’s having a hard enough time with this as it is.”
“Can’t let her baby boy grow up?”
“Can’t stand the girlfriend. She’s, well, she’s a lot like Mel to be honest.”
“She licks clit?”
“No, she’s bossy, opinionated, and has your son by the balls.”
“Christ.”
“And you’ll be nice about her, Brian. Don’t give him a hard time about his taste in women. He can’t help it if he’s straight.”
“Fine. I’ll call him after dinner.”
“I’ll let him know to expect your call. And, Brian?”
“Yeah?”
“Don’t mess up this thing with Justin.”
Brian hung up the phone and smiled winningly. “There, all better? My son’s fucking a mini-Mel and I’m emotionally traumatized. Am I now worthy to hear the story about how the glory of fatherhood turned you into the greatest artist in New York history according to Simone, the wonder agent?”
Justin glared at him and sipped from his coffee, but a grin started to take over Justin’s face as he said, simply, “Yes.”
::::
The last time Brian had seen Justin’s work had been the original Rage movie. Even the artwork in the more recent Rage comics had been farmed out to low-rent copycats, freeing Justin up to concentrate on other endeavors. Now, standing in a gallery devoted entirely to Justin’s paintings, Brian admitted that Justin’s work was startling and entirely beyond what Brian had even begun to imagine.
The series of abstract paintings consisted of oil on five by eight foot wood panels and stood at twenty pieces strong. The first panel depicted, in a pallet of russet, crimson, and white, a sense of endless space, eternity, and yet it bore no resemblance to the familiar depictions of outer space, black, looming, empty, and it lacked any taint of sterility or pristine lines. Instead it was a full enormity, and as Brian stood before it, he understood that Justin had captured an inner space, the anti-void, a vast wholeness.
The next panels condensed that wholeness into parts, compressing and containing. The first several panels compressed it only slightly, giving the impression that the wholeness had been divided, and as the panels progressed, the wholeness was further compressed and compartmentalized, yet retained an integrity difficult to reconcile with the divisions.
The panels evolved, the original vastness becoming contained in a million ways, until a series of four panels that felt like a great indrawn breath, as though the paintings themselves were waiting for a culmination, the end of a long and tremulous pause.
And suddenly in a shift both of style, color, and texture, a sense of urgency descended onto the next panel, and then a break, a release, and that was followed by a series of panels dark and tight, constricting, pressure in paint-form leaving Brian’s body tense and his breath held in, and then an easing, a gentle break, before the dark colors pushed in again, and just when the intensity was becoming too much, just when there was no way that anyone would want to continue to gaze on another panel like these, there was the crescendo, the climax, the panel that was the end in mind.
It stood there at the end, a panel of unequal purity and white hope. It was like coming out of a pool and bursting to the surface, seeing the sky blue above, clouds clean and fresh, the blinding light of the sun, and the huge gasping joy of breathing in clear air. It was lift-off in an airplane or the feeling of standing on the ledge of a tall building, nothing but air and concrete and sky. It was a vastness of an entirely different kind. It could be terrifying or it could be exhilarating, but it was called Life.
“So, do you like it?” Justin asked, bumping Brian’s shoulder.
“Does it matter?”
Justin smiled and laughed under his breath. “Not really. All the most demanding critics have already declared me a genius, and the show has almost sold out. You know what they say about money in the pocket soothing the ego.”
“I like it.”
“I know,” Justin replied, bumping against Brian, his eyes twinkling. “Those two pieces you were thinking of buying over there,” Justin pointed unerringly to Brian’s favorites of the show. “Sorry, they’ve been sold. You should’ve been here two weeks ago for the opening.”
Brian looked around the room, noting that almost every painting had indeed been purchased, as indicated by the red dot on the placard beside each one. Brian imagined each panel leaving individually and shook his head. “These shouldn’t be separated. Tell your agent I want to buy them all. Tell her to make it happen.”
Justin’s lips twitched in amusement. “Brian, you can’t afford to buy them all. I’m not sure that I can afford to buy them all. Besides, you’d be depriving some poor art collector the joy of putting the collection back together again. I’m sure there are three or four of them who are already dedicated to that very cause. I mean, look at it…” Justin waved his arm around. “It’s perfect.”
Brian snorted but didn’t deny it. He turned in a circle, looking at each piece in order again. The title of the show was “Life” and each painting represented a part of that journey from the inside to the outside, from nothing to everything. He felt a tension in his gut, possessive yearning and a pointless jealousy of everyone who owned a piece of this series, and a determination filled him. He would talk to his assistant, make some phone calls, and begin his own mission.
Justin regarded him a little nervously and said, “What?”
Brian kept his thoughts to himself, and said, instead, “Your art makes me horny. Let’s fuck.” He pulled Justin to him and nuzzled his neck.
Justin laughed, fighting with Brian’s groping hands. “Not here by the windows. Anyone could see in.”
“You used to find that kind of thing hot.”
“Used to being the operative words.” Justin laughed as Brian grabbed his ass and scooped him in closer, grinding their hips together. “I’m -- a -- father – now –and I’ve got to behave like one.” The last part of the word was almost a squeal from Brian’s hand darting into Justin’s pants and squeezing his cock.
“Behave like one later.”
“Okay,” Justin replied, breathless and kissing Brian’s neck with an open mouth.
Brian hit the wall as Justin shoved him back, Justin’s hand going to exactly the right place, rubbing Brian’s cock through his jeans with a firm touch. Justin’s eyes glinted as he started on the zipper, biting his lip and licking his lips. Brian’s head fell back. Justin slid down Brian’s body, never losing contact, blowing hot air onto Brian’s cock before carefully, slowly, taking it all the way in. Brian’s hips thrust forward and his made a noise that echoed through the gallery. Things were getting good, really good, out of this world, coming-hard-while-yelling-Justin’s-name good, when Brian’s cell phone rang.
Fuck. It was the special ringtone. The one for emergencies.
Brian grabbed Justin’s hair and fucked his face. Justin jerked in surprise at the rough treatment, but then relaxed and took it easily, letting Brian’s cock slide into his throat. Brian groaned, his knees shaking as he came, reaching into his coat pocket to pull out the phone at the same time.
“Mikey?” he gasped. “What’s wrong?”
Justin stood up slowly, wiping the back of his hand over his mouth, glassy-eyed and confused.
Brian was breathing heavily and he repeated, “Michael? What’s going on? Michael!”
Sobs echoed over the line, broken and wordless, interspersed with a high-pitched whining sound. Brian’s stomach clenched and burned. He tucked his cock away and slid to the floor of the gallery. Justin stood over him, looking worried and kind of scared.
“Michael, is it Ben?”
Brian could barely make out the words “coma” and “only a few more days” and “what am I going to do”.
“Hold on, Mikey, okay. I’ll be right there. I’m leaving now. Okay? I’m on my way.” Brian stood up and started out of the gallery, Justin behind him. He didn’t hang up the phone, listening to Michael’s heaving sobs as he hailed the cab.
Justin grabbed Brian’s arm as Brian was climbing into the cab. “I can’t come. Belle.”
“It’s okay.”
Justin looked torn before he threw his arms around Brian and said, “I love you. Go.”
Brian got into the cab, his phone still at his ear, and then he jumped out again. “Justin!” he called to Justin’s retreating back. Justin turned around, his hair glinting in the sun. “I’ll call you when I get there.”
Justin nodded and started to go again.
“Justin!”
“Yeah?”
“I, uh, love you, too. And I’ll be back.”
Justin smiled and called out, “Give Michael my love.”
Brian nodded and got into the cab, his best friend incoherent against his ear, the cab driver barely speaking English, and his hammering in his chest.
::::
Money could buy a lot of things, but it couldn’t buy a change in the weather. A sudden storm rushed the JFK Airport, grounding all small planes and despite Brian’s best efforts, there was no way he was getting on a flight on a commercial liner before the storm passed and he could go ahead and take the chartered Cessna.
It was dark before they landed in Pittsburgh. He leaned his head against the window as they approached the city, the lights burning below, and if he narrowed his eyes it looked almost as though a fire was eating away at the city, burning it down to elemental parts. Looking again with his eyes open wide, the city simply appeared lit from within.
He paid the pilot and parted ways, grabbing a taxi to the loft for a change of clothes and his car. The loft was clean, the housekeeper had been there earlier that day, and though it had been only a few month since he’d left…he felt as though he had walked into a piece of his past.
Every surface was too empty, the silence too clean, and he wanted to leave before the emptiness somehow made its way inside of him, stilling his heart, and leaving him a husk.
Michael and Ben lived in a suburb twenty minutes away. The drive was alive with lights and when he pulled up outside of their home, he sat in the car and waited. The windows of the house poured buckets of light onto the lawn and the porch. There were cars in the drive, probably Debbie’s and Hunter’s, maybe even Mel and Lindsay had flown down with Jenny Rebecca. There was movement in the windows, though Brian couldn’t see quite who was walking around.
The night air seeped into the heated car as he delayed getting out. The people he considered his family were in there and it could’ve been a holiday but it wasn’t. No, this was much more and much worse. This was the pulling together at the end, the gathering of the court to send off a king.
There was a large pond out back, something Michael had babbled on about when they’d bought the place, claiming that Brian would have to come over and go ice skating, and they’d laughed at him about it, though apparently Hunter obliged once or twice with his wife. Brian was glad. Michael deserved to have his whims indulged; he deserved to be happy.
Brian wanted to go into the house, join the party of people there. He wanted to heft Ben’s body into the canoe they kept in the garage, pile it high with the downed tree limbs from the giant spruce out back, and lead them all out back to the pond. He wanted to light candles and lift them high, as they set the canoe on fire, and let Ben’s burning boat float out to the middle of the lake. A funeral pyre for a king among men.
Instead, they would lay him to rest in a grave in Hollyoaks Cemetary next to a plot for Michael. It was a nice plot, on the side of a hill that overlooked a mountain that turned fiery orange and red in the fall. Brian already knew these things. He’d gone with Ben to the attorney to do the final planning because Michael hadn’t wanted to believe it was really time.
He opened the car door and the wind rushed around him, taking his breath away, and he approached the welcoming lights of his best friend’s home, knowing that what he’d find inside would be far from the promise the lights offered.
:::::
Debbie accosted him immediately. “I’ve been trying to get a hold of you for weeks. Did you think you could fuckin’ avoid me?” She slapped his cheek relatively lightly. “Well, think again. But, lucky for you, now is not the time. I’ve got my baby to think about.”
Michael was a mess. Debbie and Hunter seemed to be physically holding him together while Hunter’s pregnant wife wandered listlessly around the kitchen, making food that nobody wanted to eat. Jenny Rebecca wasn’t there yet. She would be arriving tomorrow, though there was some question whether or not Ben would even last that long.
Michael clung to Brian in a desperate hug, eyes red and nose running. They said nothing and when Michael finally started to let go, Brian led him down the long hallway toward the rooms where Ben had been staying since he’d lost the ability to go up and down the stairs.
Brian pressed his forehead to Michael’s and whispered, “I love you, Mikey.”
“He’s leaving me, Brian, and I can’t stop him. What am I going to do when he’s gone?”
Brian’s lips curled with repressed tears and he shrugged, unable to say anything, and why would he? He honestly did not know what Michael would do, how he would cope. Ben defined Michael’s world and losing him was going to hurt like cutting off his shadow, impossible and world-rending.
When Michael was able to breathe, Brian said, “Can I see him?”
“Yeah,” Michael said, wiping snot with the back of his hand, and nodding toward the bedroom. “He’s in there with the hospice nurse. Go on. I’ll be okay.” Michael crossed his arms over his chest, looking like the lost ten year old that Brian had first met.
Brian touched Michael’s cheek and then entered Ben’s suite of rooms. The hospice nurse was male, young, probably twenty-three or less, with jet black hair and romeo eyes. Brian was surprised that his dick seemed to take notice, but he wasn’t surprised when the nurse didn’t even give Brian a second glance.
“I’ll leave you alone,” the nurse said, walking out without looking back. Brian watched him walk out. He had a great ass, the kind that Brian would have offered to eat, round and lush.
Ben was in the bed, hooked up to tubes of various sorts, and he looked like someone Brian didn’t know. He was thin, yes, but he’d been thin for a long time; his muscles atrophied and gone. It was that he was empty. There was no one home, not in the breath that lifted his chest and fell again, not in the beep of his heart on the portable monitor.
Brian sat down on the chair next to the bed. He put his hands on his knees and looked at what death looked like. He saw his own face in the mirror every day, knew the intimacies of the wrinkles and the horrors of the gray hair. But this was Death, this was his destiny. There was no escaping it.
“Nights like these, the dying see clearly,” Brian quoted softly. He looked for any evidence of the man he wanted to speak to and didn’t see anything at all.
“I wanted to tell you thank you for loving him…the way that I couldn’t,” he said aloud. “But I won’t, because you’re already gone,” he thought, bowing his head and feeling the heavy weight of loss push down on him, steady and real. More real than he wanted it to be.
::::
Michael fell asleep with the aid of a sedative and despite Debbie’s loud and constant “help”. Brian clapped Hunter on the shoulder and declared him in charge of making sure that Michael was okay through the night. Hunter grabbed Brian’s shoulders and hugged him hard, and Brian thought he might’ve been crying a little.
He escaped the house before Deb could get her claws into him. He knew that she wanted to talk to him, not only about Michael and Ben, but about Justin and Belle and his heart and God knows what else, but tonight was not his night to deal with that. It could wait.
Liberty Avenue swam with queers moving like schools of fish down the sidewalks; the groups darted and dodged, twisted, turned, flashed and vanished into the darkness of doorways that went into stores, bars, restaurants, all lit with that same light that Brian had seen while standing outside of Michael and Ben’s house: the light that beckoned with the promise of something warm and full, something that would feel like Christmas morning or New Year’s Eve, something ephemeral and doomed to always be just outside of Brian’s reach, always leaving Brian with the feeling that maybe if he’d chosen a different door, another bar, the other trick, maybe he’d finally be able to capture it. It was a feeling he remembered having as a child, and one that he’d fought off when he’d been in his twenties and thirties by constantly moving, never taking the time to let himself feel the pull of it, the lure of something brighter, bigger, more real than anything he’d ever had before.
Now, he felt it like a pain, and he paused in his walking, watching the doors open and close, the music drifting down the street, aimless and without form. Somewhere in New York , if Brian closed his eyes on these lights and these people, he could picture exactly where, there was an apartment with lights glowing in the windows. He could picture it as though he stood on the street below, staring up, feeling the pull, wanting it, knowing who was inside and what they might be doing: cooking dinner, dancing by the fireplace, watching cartoons, or playing princess and dragon. It would feel so much more real than this. And he knew, even though it was just in his mind, that he could choose to walk up the stairs and join them. He would be welcomed with open arms.
:::::
Babylon pulsed with heat, youth, music, and sex. Nine years after Brian had purchased it, it was still the top club in the city. For awhile, Brian had seen to it personally, designing outrageous spectacle after outrageous spectacle, enticing the young and not-so-young alike with the hottest dancers, the hardest drinks, the slickest lights and sights, creating a reputation for the club as a gay mecca, drawing homos from around the world, or at least homos who somehow found themselves in Pittsuburgh. A few years ago, Brian had handed over the main reigns for keeping Babylon a mainstay in the gay universe to Natalie Johnson, a twenty-something lesbian with balls of steel and an innate talent for having her needle jammed directly in the vein of the ever fickle queer pulse.
Brian had witnessed her handle disputes among employees and patrons alike with a steely calm, perfectly lipsticked smile, and a frightening strength that scared Brian more than Mel’s heavy-handed butch ways ever had, which is why he’d given Natalie stakes in the venture, to further increase her investment in making Babylon the greatest homo-retreat, dance hall, fuck palace that would ever grace the Pitts.
He stood on one of the balconies, looking down at the dance floor, his eyes searching for the one person that he most wanted to see tonight, and it didn’t take long to find him. His name was unimportant, Brian knew it, couldn’t help but know it, hearing it all around him every time he stepped into Babylon, or the Liberty Diner, or walked down Liberty Avenue, but the name was unimportant to Brian. The name was just consonants and a few vowels. What was important was that this was the new Brian Kinney, and the fact that people still said that, well, it stung and it vindicated, because he was still legendary, but pressed inexorably into the past.
Brian’s eyes found the new Brian Kinney easily, dancing with two younger men, both trying to be the one who might be lucky enough to be dragged to the backroom. The new Brian Kinney’s eyes were closed, his mouth open, and almost every face in the room was turned toward him, everybody attuned to his presence, and almost anyone would agree to go anywhere with him to do anything. He was beautiful, he was young, he was desirable, and he was completely alone, unfettered and free.
Brian waited for the feelings to come. He stood and let them roll in, strong, a tide coming in hard, and he smiled. He smiled and then he laughed. Tonight, he could see what no one else in the room could, tonight, with the one beautiful gift that the youth is always lacking and never believes is of any value at all, just an old man’s excuse to keep on living when he should’ve expired long ago, oh, tonight that gift, that glorious perspective filled Brian’s entire soul and taught his eyes, and tonight, looking down on the next Brian Kinney, he didn’t feel bitter, tired, sad, old, or nostalgic; no, what he felt was more accurately described as pity.
The man below him was probably twenty-seven years old, old enough to have acquired the keys to power and dominance, young enough to inspire lust and awe in those who saw him, but Brian knew what no one else did, what the man himself didn’t know; Brian saw what was invisible to the world: the prison the man couldn’t escape; a prison made of pain, expectations, and endless, sweating fear.
Brian took a deep breath, rubbing his hand along his upper lip, shocked at the sting of tears in his eyes. He was looking at his own prison cell, staring it in the face, and seeing how easy it was to turn around and open the door; it had never been locked to begin with.
He retreated to the offices, shut the door on the pounding music, slipped into Natalie’s office, and called Justin.
“Brian, it’s the middle of the night,” Justin muttered, sleep making his deep voice even rougher.
“I know….”
“Where are you?”
“Babylon.”
“Ah,” Justin said and Brian could hear the mattress creak as he sat up in bed. “Calling to share the kinky details with me?”
“No.”
“Okay,” Justin said, confused. “Is everything all right? You sound strange.”
“I’m good. Really good, Sunshine. Best I’ve been in years.”
“All right….” Justin trailed off and Brian listened to him breath, the pounding of the dance music just a dull thud through the insulated walls. “So…why did you call?”
Brian put his head down on Natalie’s desk, cradling the phone next to his ear. “I called to thank you.”
“Thank me? For what?”
Brian hesitated, a crass joke on the tip of his tongue, but he thought of the man dancing downstairs, the next Brian Kinney trapped so tightly in his jail cell. “For showing me how fucking stupid it is to live in prison. For giving me a way out of…all of this. For letting me figure out how to get to freedom.”
Justin was silent for a few minutes while Brian waited breathlessly. Finally, he said, “Huh? What the fuck are you talking about?”
“That’s a dollar, Daddy,” Brian heard Belle’s sleepy voice murmur not far from the phone.
“Never mind. Just say…I don’t know, ‘you’re welcome’ or something.”
“You’re welcome,” Justin said and yawned.
“Belle’s in bed with you?”
“Nightmares.”
“Can I talk to her?”
“Only if you promise not to say incoherent and drunken things to her about prison.”
“I promise.”
“Belle, honey, Brian wants to talk to you.”
There were some scuffing sounds and then Belle’s voice slid over the phone line, sleep slow and husky. “Brian, are you coming home soon?”
“Soon, Belle, I promise.”
“Is your friend dead yet?”
“Belle!” Justin’s voice exclaimed in the background. “Honey, that’s not a nice thing to say, it’s rude.”
“Sorry. But, Brian, can your friend hurry up and die so you can come home?”
Brian smiled, shaking his head and a strange lump in his throat. “I want to come home, too.”
“Okay, will you also bring me a My Little Pony Dream Farm?”
“Anabelle Taylor, do not ask Brian for things like that. We talked about this. Please give Daddy the phone now.”
“Daddy wants the phone.” Belle lowered her voice to a whisper. “You can still get the Dream Farm, Brian. I won’t be mad.”
Brian chuckled as Justin got back on the phone.
“Brian, please don’t encourage her by getting the Dream Farm. She needs to learn to wait for things like other kids do.”
“Why, when her father and his partner have more money than God? She’s not any other kid; she’s Belle.”
“We can argue over parenting styles another day, maybe when it isn’t three in the morning.”
“Justin?”
“Yeah?”
“Goodnight.”
“I love you, too, ” Justin said, and the phone disconnected.
Brian hung up and sat staring at his hands, his lip in teeth, and a strange, open feeling in his chest. So odd that demands for a My Little Pony Dream Farm and an anticipated argument over parenting choices could feel more like freedom than years of unfettered promiscuity, drugs, and boundless physical pleasure.
Or maybe, Brian thought, it was simply that true freedom felt nearly identical to hope.
::::
Liberty Diner at three am looked just like all the other places from the outside looking in, warm like honey and inviting. Once inside, though, it was garish and loud, and suffering from a desperate lack of Debbie, though her touches could be seen everywhere, from the buttons all over the red vests of every waiter in the place, to the ridiculous homemade t-shirts they all wore professing their own personal logos.
Brian sat three booths down from the next Brian Kinney and his friends. He ordered a cup of coffee and thought about how a week with Justin had made him feel like the last time he’d seen this side of sunrise was a hundred years ago.
The next Brian Kinney lounged in the booth, one arm slung over the back, and a scrappy blond friend with glasses sitting next to him nattering on about which season of Heroes had had the best genetically superior superbeings. The brunet sitting across from them looked a few years older, and he appeared to be less than entirely engaged in Scrappy Glasses opinions on the now half-a-decade old television show.
Brian let his gaze wander, bored by the inanity of their conversation and the pity that he felt every time he looked at the poor next Brian Kinney trapped in his gilded cage. His eyebrows lifted as two older men came in, older than Brian even, probably in their fifites. They looked giddy, maybe high, and they were holding hands. Cowboy boots and big belt buckles, along with the heavy Texan accents when they ordered made it clear that they ‘weren’t from around here’. Brian watched as they sat down at the bar stools, their hands touching casually, their eyes glowing when they looked at each other.
“Look at those fucks, so fat and content,” Scrappy Glasses said, not bothering to lower his voice. “God, I hope I never get fat.”
“Or content,” the next Brian Kinney threw in, taking a long drag on his cigarette. “Ain’t it sweet?” he mocked, taking on the accent like he knew it well. “Wearing wedding rings just like breeders and out on the town. Probably just renewed their fucking vows.”
“I think I just threw up a little in my mouth,” Older Brunet chimed in.
“It’s the content part of the equation that gets ‘em,” the next Brian Kinney drawled on. “First they fall in love, or what they think is love, then they stop striving for anything more. And there you have it,” he gestured at the couple. “Content, fat fucks. Death would be preferable.”
Brian took another sip of coffee as a blond waiter burst through the kitchen door with plates of food in both hands. The next Brian Kinney’s eyes fell unerringly on the waiter and there was something there, something that made Brian’s stomach drop in a wave of déjà vu, but then it passed. The next Brian Kinney turned his head and took another drag on his cigarette and the waiter left the food at the table and moved on. And Brian knew. He knew it hadn’t happened to the next Brian Kinney yet. He hadn’t found a person who made him come back for more, made him start to feel something that scared the shit out him, made him maybe think that living right here, right now wasn’t going to break him into a million pieces, or not caring if it did.
Brian dropped money on the table and stood up walking out the door, knowing that when you’ve found contentment, what’s the point of striving for something more? If you’ve found a life that doesn’t hurt when you breathe, why would you want to reach for the pain again? He smiled, knowing the answer.
Because it all came down to whether or not you believed that you deserved it.
::::
Procede to PART FOUR
:::::
Into My Arms: Part Three
“You leave soon, right?” Justin said over breakfast.
“Yeah, tomorrow morning,” Brian replied, and Belle’s head snapped away from Sesame Street, her big eyes focusing on Brian.
“Why?” she asked, and before Brian could answer, she continued, “Don’t go! Please!”
“It’s okay, Belle,” Justin said. “He’s not going away for good, just for a few days.”
“Why?” she demanded again, and she looked like she better be pleased with the answer.
“For work,” Justin said. “His company needs him.”
Her eyes narrowed suspiciously. “Is that true?”
“Of course it is, honey,” Justin said.
“I can talk for myself,” Brian muttered and Justin held up in hands in surrender. “Belle, I’ll be back soon. Don’t worry. You’re not getting rid of me.”
“Good, because you’re the only one who can be Beast now.”
“I can be Beast,” Justin offered. “Just when Brian is away, of course.”
“No, Daddy, you’re not allowed.”
“Why not?”
“ You’re Daddy and that means I can’t marry you, duh,” Belle said, rolling her eyes in a way that Brian had to admit mimicked his own eye rolls perfectly.
“Oh, right, of course,” Justin said, looking at Brian in amusement.
“I’m going to marry Brian when I grow up,” Belle said, nodding her head happily.
“Your kid’s going to be a wonderful fag hag, honey,” Brian teased.
Justin rolled his eyes.
“What’s a fat hag?” Belle asked.
“A fat lady who wants to be loved by the friends of Dorothy,” Brian replied, preening a little as he spoke.
“Dorothy who?” Belle asked.
“Christ, show the kid The Wizard of Oz like any respectable queer, Justin!”
Justin ignored Brian and said, “Not fat, Belle. The word was fag. Fag is a not very nice word for a gay man, like me and Brian. I’d prefer you didn’t say that word, okay?”
“Gay men love other men and not women,” Belle said solemnly to Brian, using her spoon for emphasis.
Justin went on, “Fag hag means a grown-up lady who prefers the company of gay men.”
“So, they won’t shop unless gay men own the company?” Belle asked.
“Not if they’re smart, they won’t,” Brian agreed.
“No, they like to hang out with gay men,” Justin said, attempting to keep the conversation on track.
“Oh, okay.”
Justin sat back looking self-satisfied, obviously pleased with his parenting prowess. Brian snickered at him until Justin surreptitiously flipped him the bird. Minutes after they both thought the conversation was over, Belle announced. “I want to be a fag hag when I grow up.”
“Don’t worry, Belle,” Brian said, patting her on the head as he stood to leave the table. “It’s your destiny.”
::::
“You know,” Brian said to Justin as they stood outside of Belle’s preschool, having just dropped her off. “I’ve never had a fag hag.”
Justin started walking and Brian fell in beside him. “Um, excuse me? What do you call Lindsay?”
“Me? I call her a muncher, but I can’t speak for you.”
“Yeah, well, I call her your fag hag,” Justin laughed. “Hell, you had a baby with your fag hag.”
“And you didn’t?”
“I never claimed not to have one.” Justin pointed out, and then added thoughtfully. “I’ve got a few, actually. Daph, Simone, and Meg, of course, before she died.”
“Lesbians are not fag hags,” Brian stated. “Thus, I’ve never had one and never needed one.”
“Oh, get over yourself,” Justin said, hitting Brian’s stomach with the back of hand. “You fucked your fag hag in college, and then years later you had a baby with her, just because she eats pussy, nothing changes that.”
“I beg to differ.”
“Beg away. I like it when you beg.”
Brian put on an expression of one who has been mortally wounded. “I beg your pardon, but I have never begged.”
“Keep on telling yourself that, Brian.” Justin pointed north and they headed toward the coffee place that Justin liked to frequent near the gallery that showed his art. “Have you talked to Gus?” Justin asked.
“Yesterday,” Brian replied, then he sighed heavily. “His mother tells me that he’s got a girlfriend.”
“Speaking of pussy,” Justin laughed.
Brian shuddered. “The thought of my son diving into muff will drive me to drink, Sunshine. Let’s not discuss it.”
Justin’s shook his head in amusement as they walked, and Brian bumped his shoulder affectionately. Justin caught Brian’s eye, and Brian took a deep breath and didn’t resist when Justin took hold of his hand, and they walked together, like a couple, down the street, holding hands.
Brian kept his eyes straight ahead, picking up the pace a little, so that he was dragging Justin along slightly behind him. It helped him to still feel in charge of the moment, though he knew it was a tell that Justin would pick up on, and possibly read the wrong way. Still, Justin’s hand in his was warm and right, the palm snug in his own, and Justin’s fingers weren’t too loose or too tight around his own. He realized he was holding Justin’s damaged hand, the one that he’d fought to use again so long again.
He slowed his pace, let Justin right up next to him, and then tucked him under his arm, pulling him close. He lifted Justin’s hand to his lips and kissed it. “Does it still bother you?” he asked.
Justin shook his head. “Well, occasionally, when I don’t get enough rest.”
Brian massaged the hand gently as they walked. “You know, there haven’t been many times in my life that I’ve been as scared as I was that night.”
“Yeah?” Justin whispered, his voice barely audible over the city noises.
“Yeah. There was one other time, about a year after you left, when Babylon was bombed.”
“You called me that night,” Justin reminded him. “To tell me about Michael.”
Brian nodded. It’d been to hear Justin’s voice, actually; he’d needed Justin so badly that night. He’d done little more than cry silently on the phone and Justin had let him. It had been their last phone conversation.
“Michael…” Brian trailed off.
“After we talked, I called Debbie, you know. I almost came home, then, but Debbie told me to stay put. She let me know when he was safe.”
Brian swallowed hard, surprised by the deep well of anger that rushed up and filled him, making it hard for him to see where he was going. Damn Debbie. Fuck her. He’d needed Justin so much….
“Hey, watch it,” Justin said, jerking him back from nearly walking into a car. “We don’t need to talk about this.”
Brian stopped walking, put his hands on Justin’s shoulders and said, “Yes, we do, Sunshine.”
Justin looked terrified and confused but he said, “Okay, then, go on.”
Brian stared into Justin’s eyes, curious and scared, realized he wasn’t breathing, actually neither of them were. He inhaled and the cold air brought tears to his eyes. “I wanted you to come home,” Brian’s voice broke, but he managed to go on, “so much, I almost begged you to come home that night, but I couldn’t. I wish that I had.”
Justin’s face softened even more. “Oh,” he said, not much more than a sharp intake of breath.
“I was so scared that Michael would die, so scared that I’d be left alone. After that night I didn’t call again because,” Brian’s eyes closed and he took a steadying breath.
“It’s all right,” Justin murmured.
“Let me say it,” Brian said. “You said we should talk about shit, so let me fucking talk about it.”
“Okay, fine.”
“I didn’t call again because when you didn’t offer to come home, I knew I’d lost you.”
Justin shook his head, his eyes shining and sad. “Brian, you never lost me. You could have called anytime and asked. I would’ve come.”
“I know.”
“Do you?”
“I think I do.”
Justin lifted onto his toes and Brian held him close, burying his face in Justin’s neck. Brian’s body was tense and he couldn’t let it go, couldn’t force himself to relax in Justin’s arms.
“I love you,” Justin whispered.
Brian squeezed him tight and held on.
::::
“Here, drink this,” Justin said, shoving a coffee mug into Brian’s cold hands. “After your personal episode of Roadside Confessions, I think we could both use some warming up. Next time, save it until we get inside, okay?”
Brian smirked, still tight and uncomfortable from having revealed too much. He wondered why anyone ever said anything to anyone else; self-revelation always engendered in him a period of intense self-loathing during which he wished he’d just kept his mouth shut.
“So, in the spirit of full disclosure,” Justin started.
Brian held up his hand. “I don’t think I can do this right now, Sunshine.”
Justin smiled. “It’s okay, this isn’t a big deal. I just need to tell you that I’ve dragged you over here to take you to the gallery, to see my show.”
“I’d never have guessed,” Brian said, taking a sip of his overpriced latte.
“Simone gave me the keys. They’re closed on Mondays, so we’ll have the place to ourselves.”
“Lindsay will be pissed that you let someone else show your work.”
“Um speaking of,” Justin hesitated and then went on. “Did you tell Lindsay about this? About you being here with me and Belle?”
Brian shrugged. “No.”
“Why not?” Justin asked, eyes narrowing a little.
“It didn’t come up?”
“How could it not come up?”
“Because Lindsay doesn’ t make me hard, Sunshine, you know that,” Brian said.
“Don’t be obtuse.”
“What do you want me to say? I didn’t mention it because it didn’t come up, it isn’t her business, and I didn’t want to go into it with her.”
Justin crossed his arms over his chest and said, “I don’t suppose you might see how that is a huge red flag for me?”
“I spoke to her for less than two minutes before talking to my son!”
“Did you tell Gus?”
Brian looked away.
“I thought not.” Justin sighed and scratched his fingers through his hair. He looked tired again. “I’m sorry, Brian. This isn’t the conversation I wanted to have with you right now. I was supposed to tell you how my show was conceived when Belle was, and how the pieces reflect the strength of life, starting with a single cell, but—I don’t want to tell you that anymore because you’re an asshole.”
Brian sighed. “I’ll call them both right now if it will make you happy.”
“But will it make you happy?”
“Fucking hell, Justin, yes, okay? What do you want me to say? There are no right answers here and you know it.”
“I just want to believe that this is something serious for you, Brian, because it is for me, and it is for Belle.”
Brian got out his phone and Justin tried to bat it out of his hands, but Brian hit the speed dial, keeping it away from Justin. “Lindsay, this is Brian.”
“Brian, is everything okay?” Lindsay’s concern was warm in his ear.
“Yeah, I’m fine. I’m in New York City with Justin and his daughter. I thought you’d want to know.”
"Okay," Lindsay sounded as confused as Brian felt. "That's good?
"Yes. We're…partners. You should know. Tell Mel, tell your postman, tell your fucking boss, tell the world, okay?" Brian looked at Justin pointedly before closing his eyes. “Tell Sonny Boy, too. I’d like him to meet Justin.”
“Tell him yourself,” Lindsay said. “Call him tonight. He’s got news, too.”
“Don’t tell me—he knocked the girlfriend up.”
“Oh, Brian, don’t say things like that! My God! The very idea! And don’t let Mel hear you saying that kind of thing, she’s having a hard enough time with this as it is.”
“Can’t let her baby boy grow up?”
“Can’t stand the girlfriend. She’s, well, she’s a lot like Mel to be honest.”
“She licks clit?”
“No, she’s bossy, opinionated, and has your son by the balls.”
“Christ.”
“And you’ll be nice about her, Brian. Don’t give him a hard time about his taste in women. He can’t help it if he’s straight.”
“Fine. I’ll call him after dinner.”
“I’ll let him know to expect your call. And, Brian?”
“Yeah?”
“Don’t mess up this thing with Justin.”
Brian hung up the phone and smiled winningly. “There, all better? My son’s fucking a mini-Mel and I’m emotionally traumatized. Am I now worthy to hear the story about how the glory of fatherhood turned you into the greatest artist in New York history according to Simone, the wonder agent?”
Justin glared at him and sipped from his coffee, but a grin started to take over Justin’s face as he said, simply, “Yes.”
::::
The last time Brian had seen Justin’s work had been the original Rage movie. Even the artwork in the more recent Rage comics had been farmed out to low-rent copycats, freeing Justin up to concentrate on other endeavors. Now, standing in a gallery devoted entirely to Justin’s paintings, Brian admitted that Justin’s work was startling and entirely beyond what Brian had even begun to imagine.
The series of abstract paintings consisted of oil on five by eight foot wood panels and stood at twenty pieces strong. The first panel depicted, in a pallet of russet, crimson, and white, a sense of endless space, eternity, and yet it bore no resemblance to the familiar depictions of outer space, black, looming, empty, and it lacked any taint of sterility or pristine lines. Instead it was a full enormity, and as Brian stood before it, he understood that Justin had captured an inner space, the anti-void, a vast wholeness.
The next panels condensed that wholeness into parts, compressing and containing. The first several panels compressed it only slightly, giving the impression that the wholeness had been divided, and as the panels progressed, the wholeness was further compressed and compartmentalized, yet retained an integrity difficult to reconcile with the divisions.
The panels evolved, the original vastness becoming contained in a million ways, until a series of four panels that felt like a great indrawn breath, as though the paintings themselves were waiting for a culmination, the end of a long and tremulous pause.
And suddenly in a shift both of style, color, and texture, a sense of urgency descended onto the next panel, and then a break, a release, and that was followed by a series of panels dark and tight, constricting, pressure in paint-form leaving Brian’s body tense and his breath held in, and then an easing, a gentle break, before the dark colors pushed in again, and just when the intensity was becoming too much, just when there was no way that anyone would want to continue to gaze on another panel like these, there was the crescendo, the climax, the panel that was the end in mind.
It stood there at the end, a panel of unequal purity and white hope. It was like coming out of a pool and bursting to the surface, seeing the sky blue above, clouds clean and fresh, the blinding light of the sun, and the huge gasping joy of breathing in clear air. It was lift-off in an airplane or the feeling of standing on the ledge of a tall building, nothing but air and concrete and sky. It was a vastness of an entirely different kind. It could be terrifying or it could be exhilarating, but it was called Life.
“So, do you like it?” Justin asked, bumping Brian’s shoulder.
“Does it matter?”
Justin smiled and laughed under his breath. “Not really. All the most demanding critics have already declared me a genius, and the show has almost sold out. You know what they say about money in the pocket soothing the ego.”
“I like it.”
“I know,” Justin replied, bumping against Brian, his eyes twinkling. “Those two pieces you were thinking of buying over there,” Justin pointed unerringly to Brian’s favorites of the show. “Sorry, they’ve been sold. You should’ve been here two weeks ago for the opening.”
Brian looked around the room, noting that almost every painting had indeed been purchased, as indicated by the red dot on the placard beside each one. Brian imagined each panel leaving individually and shook his head. “These shouldn’t be separated. Tell your agent I want to buy them all. Tell her to make it happen.”
Justin’s lips twitched in amusement. “Brian, you can’t afford to buy them all. I’m not sure that I can afford to buy them all. Besides, you’d be depriving some poor art collector the joy of putting the collection back together again. I’m sure there are three or four of them who are already dedicated to that very cause. I mean, look at it…” Justin waved his arm around. “It’s perfect.”
Brian snorted but didn’t deny it. He turned in a circle, looking at each piece in order again. The title of the show was “Life” and each painting represented a part of that journey from the inside to the outside, from nothing to everything. He felt a tension in his gut, possessive yearning and a pointless jealousy of everyone who owned a piece of this series, and a determination filled him. He would talk to his assistant, make some phone calls, and begin his own mission.
Justin regarded him a little nervously and said, “What?”
Brian kept his thoughts to himself, and said, instead, “Your art makes me horny. Let’s fuck.” He pulled Justin to him and nuzzled his neck.
Justin laughed, fighting with Brian’s groping hands. “Not here by the windows. Anyone could see in.”
“You used to find that kind of thing hot.”
“Used to being the operative words.” Justin laughed as Brian grabbed his ass and scooped him in closer, grinding their hips together. “I’m -- a -- father – now –and I’ve got to behave like one.” The last part of the word was almost a squeal from Brian’s hand darting into Justin’s pants and squeezing his cock.
“Behave like one later.”
“Okay,” Justin replied, breathless and kissing Brian’s neck with an open mouth.
Brian hit the wall as Justin shoved him back, Justin’s hand going to exactly the right place, rubbing Brian’s cock through his jeans with a firm touch. Justin’s eyes glinted as he started on the zipper, biting his lip and licking his lips. Brian’s head fell back. Justin slid down Brian’s body, never losing contact, blowing hot air onto Brian’s cock before carefully, slowly, taking it all the way in. Brian’s hips thrust forward and his made a noise that echoed through the gallery. Things were getting good, really good, out of this world, coming-hard-while-yelling-Justin’s-name good, when Brian’s cell phone rang.
Fuck. It was the special ringtone. The one for emergencies.
Brian grabbed Justin’s hair and fucked his face. Justin jerked in surprise at the rough treatment, but then relaxed and took it easily, letting Brian’s cock slide into his throat. Brian groaned, his knees shaking as he came, reaching into his coat pocket to pull out the phone at the same time.
“Mikey?” he gasped. “What’s wrong?”
Justin stood up slowly, wiping the back of his hand over his mouth, glassy-eyed and confused.
Brian was breathing heavily and he repeated, “Michael? What’s going on? Michael!”
Sobs echoed over the line, broken and wordless, interspersed with a high-pitched whining sound. Brian’s stomach clenched and burned. He tucked his cock away and slid to the floor of the gallery. Justin stood over him, looking worried and kind of scared.
“Michael, is it Ben?”
Brian could barely make out the words “coma” and “only a few more days” and “what am I going to do”.
“Hold on, Mikey, okay. I’ll be right there. I’m leaving now. Okay? I’m on my way.” Brian stood up and started out of the gallery, Justin behind him. He didn’t hang up the phone, listening to Michael’s heaving sobs as he hailed the cab.
Justin grabbed Brian’s arm as Brian was climbing into the cab. “I can’t come. Belle.”
“It’s okay.”
Justin looked torn before he threw his arms around Brian and said, “I love you. Go.”
Brian got into the cab, his phone still at his ear, and then he jumped out again. “Justin!” he called to Justin’s retreating back. Justin turned around, his hair glinting in the sun. “I’ll call you when I get there.”
Justin nodded and started to go again.
“Justin!”
“Yeah?”
“I, uh, love you, too. And I’ll be back.”
Justin smiled and called out, “Give Michael my love.”
Brian nodded and got into the cab, his best friend incoherent against his ear, the cab driver barely speaking English, and his hammering in his chest.
::::
Money could buy a lot of things, but it couldn’t buy a change in the weather. A sudden storm rushed the JFK Airport, grounding all small planes and despite Brian’s best efforts, there was no way he was getting on a flight on a commercial liner before the storm passed and he could go ahead and take the chartered Cessna.
It was dark before they landed in Pittsburgh. He leaned his head against the window as they approached the city, the lights burning below, and if he narrowed his eyes it looked almost as though a fire was eating away at the city, burning it down to elemental parts. Looking again with his eyes open wide, the city simply appeared lit from within.
He paid the pilot and parted ways, grabbing a taxi to the loft for a change of clothes and his car. The loft was clean, the housekeeper had been there earlier that day, and though it had been only a few month since he’d left…he felt as though he had walked into a piece of his past.
Every surface was too empty, the silence too clean, and he wanted to leave before the emptiness somehow made its way inside of him, stilling his heart, and leaving him a husk.
Michael and Ben lived in a suburb twenty minutes away. The drive was alive with lights and when he pulled up outside of their home, he sat in the car and waited. The windows of the house poured buckets of light onto the lawn and the porch. There were cars in the drive, probably Debbie’s and Hunter’s, maybe even Mel and Lindsay had flown down with Jenny Rebecca. There was movement in the windows, though Brian couldn’t see quite who was walking around.
The night air seeped into the heated car as he delayed getting out. The people he considered his family were in there and it could’ve been a holiday but it wasn’t. No, this was much more and much worse. This was the pulling together at the end, the gathering of the court to send off a king.
There was a large pond out back, something Michael had babbled on about when they’d bought the place, claiming that Brian would have to come over and go ice skating, and they’d laughed at him about it, though apparently Hunter obliged once or twice with his wife. Brian was glad. Michael deserved to have his whims indulged; he deserved to be happy.
Brian wanted to go into the house, join the party of people there. He wanted to heft Ben’s body into the canoe they kept in the garage, pile it high with the downed tree limbs from the giant spruce out back, and lead them all out back to the pond. He wanted to light candles and lift them high, as they set the canoe on fire, and let Ben’s burning boat float out to the middle of the lake. A funeral pyre for a king among men.
Instead, they would lay him to rest in a grave in Hollyoaks Cemetary next to a plot for Michael. It was a nice plot, on the side of a hill that overlooked a mountain that turned fiery orange and red in the fall. Brian already knew these things. He’d gone with Ben to the attorney to do the final planning because Michael hadn’t wanted to believe it was really time.
He opened the car door and the wind rushed around him, taking his breath away, and he approached the welcoming lights of his best friend’s home, knowing that what he’d find inside would be far from the promise the lights offered.
:::::
Debbie accosted him immediately. “I’ve been trying to get a hold of you for weeks. Did you think you could fuckin’ avoid me?” She slapped his cheek relatively lightly. “Well, think again. But, lucky for you, now is not the time. I’ve got my baby to think about.”
Michael was a mess. Debbie and Hunter seemed to be physically holding him together while Hunter’s pregnant wife wandered listlessly around the kitchen, making food that nobody wanted to eat. Jenny Rebecca wasn’t there yet. She would be arriving tomorrow, though there was some question whether or not Ben would even last that long.
Michael clung to Brian in a desperate hug, eyes red and nose running. They said nothing and when Michael finally started to let go, Brian led him down the long hallway toward the rooms where Ben had been staying since he’d lost the ability to go up and down the stairs.
Brian pressed his forehead to Michael’s and whispered, “I love you, Mikey.”
“He’s leaving me, Brian, and I can’t stop him. What am I going to do when he’s gone?”
Brian’s lips curled with repressed tears and he shrugged, unable to say anything, and why would he? He honestly did not know what Michael would do, how he would cope. Ben defined Michael’s world and losing him was going to hurt like cutting off his shadow, impossible and world-rending.
When Michael was able to breathe, Brian said, “Can I see him?”
“Yeah,” Michael said, wiping snot with the back of his hand, and nodding toward the bedroom. “He’s in there with the hospice nurse. Go on. I’ll be okay.” Michael crossed his arms over his chest, looking like the lost ten year old that Brian had first met.
Brian touched Michael’s cheek and then entered Ben’s suite of rooms. The hospice nurse was male, young, probably twenty-three or less, with jet black hair and romeo eyes. Brian was surprised that his dick seemed to take notice, but he wasn’t surprised when the nurse didn’t even give Brian a second glance.
“I’ll leave you alone,” the nurse said, walking out without looking back. Brian watched him walk out. He had a great ass, the kind that Brian would have offered to eat, round and lush.
Ben was in the bed, hooked up to tubes of various sorts, and he looked like someone Brian didn’t know. He was thin, yes, but he’d been thin for a long time; his muscles atrophied and gone. It was that he was empty. There was no one home, not in the breath that lifted his chest and fell again, not in the beep of his heart on the portable monitor.
Brian sat down on the chair next to the bed. He put his hands on his knees and looked at what death looked like. He saw his own face in the mirror every day, knew the intimacies of the wrinkles and the horrors of the gray hair. But this was Death, this was his destiny. There was no escaping it.
“Nights like these, the dying see clearly,” Brian quoted softly. He looked for any evidence of the man he wanted to speak to and didn’t see anything at all.
“I wanted to tell you thank you for loving him…the way that I couldn’t,” he said aloud. “But I won’t, because you’re already gone,” he thought, bowing his head and feeling the heavy weight of loss push down on him, steady and real. More real than he wanted it to be.
::::
Michael fell asleep with the aid of a sedative and despite Debbie’s loud and constant “help”. Brian clapped Hunter on the shoulder and declared him in charge of making sure that Michael was okay through the night. Hunter grabbed Brian’s shoulders and hugged him hard, and Brian thought he might’ve been crying a little.
He escaped the house before Deb could get her claws into him. He knew that she wanted to talk to him, not only about Michael and Ben, but about Justin and Belle and his heart and God knows what else, but tonight was not his night to deal with that. It could wait.
Liberty Avenue swam with queers moving like schools of fish down the sidewalks; the groups darted and dodged, twisted, turned, flashed and vanished into the darkness of doorways that went into stores, bars, restaurants, all lit with that same light that Brian had seen while standing outside of Michael and Ben’s house: the light that beckoned with the promise of something warm and full, something that would feel like Christmas morning or New Year’s Eve, something ephemeral and doomed to always be just outside of Brian’s reach, always leaving Brian with the feeling that maybe if he’d chosen a different door, another bar, the other trick, maybe he’d finally be able to capture it. It was a feeling he remembered having as a child, and one that he’d fought off when he’d been in his twenties and thirties by constantly moving, never taking the time to let himself feel the pull of it, the lure of something brighter, bigger, more real than anything he’d ever had before.
Now, he felt it like a pain, and he paused in his walking, watching the doors open and close, the music drifting down the street, aimless and without form. Somewhere in New York , if Brian closed his eyes on these lights and these people, he could picture exactly where, there was an apartment with lights glowing in the windows. He could picture it as though he stood on the street below, staring up, feeling the pull, wanting it, knowing who was inside and what they might be doing: cooking dinner, dancing by the fireplace, watching cartoons, or playing princess and dragon. It would feel so much more real than this. And he knew, even though it was just in his mind, that he could choose to walk up the stairs and join them. He would be welcomed with open arms.
:::::
Babylon pulsed with heat, youth, music, and sex. Nine years after Brian had purchased it, it was still the top club in the city. For awhile, Brian had seen to it personally, designing outrageous spectacle after outrageous spectacle, enticing the young and not-so-young alike with the hottest dancers, the hardest drinks, the slickest lights and sights, creating a reputation for the club as a gay mecca, drawing homos from around the world, or at least homos who somehow found themselves in Pittsuburgh. A few years ago, Brian had handed over the main reigns for keeping Babylon a mainstay in the gay universe to Natalie Johnson, a twenty-something lesbian with balls of steel and an innate talent for having her needle jammed directly in the vein of the ever fickle queer pulse.
Brian had witnessed her handle disputes among employees and patrons alike with a steely calm, perfectly lipsticked smile, and a frightening strength that scared Brian more than Mel’s heavy-handed butch ways ever had, which is why he’d given Natalie stakes in the venture, to further increase her investment in making Babylon the greatest homo-retreat, dance hall, fuck palace that would ever grace the Pitts.
He stood on one of the balconies, looking down at the dance floor, his eyes searching for the one person that he most wanted to see tonight, and it didn’t take long to find him. His name was unimportant, Brian knew it, couldn’t help but know it, hearing it all around him every time he stepped into Babylon, or the Liberty Diner, or walked down Liberty Avenue, but the name was unimportant to Brian. The name was just consonants and a few vowels. What was important was that this was the new Brian Kinney, and the fact that people still said that, well, it stung and it vindicated, because he was still legendary, but pressed inexorably into the past.
Brian’s eyes found the new Brian Kinney easily, dancing with two younger men, both trying to be the one who might be lucky enough to be dragged to the backroom. The new Brian Kinney’s eyes were closed, his mouth open, and almost every face in the room was turned toward him, everybody attuned to his presence, and almost anyone would agree to go anywhere with him to do anything. He was beautiful, he was young, he was desirable, and he was completely alone, unfettered and free.
Brian waited for the feelings to come. He stood and let them roll in, strong, a tide coming in hard, and he smiled. He smiled and then he laughed. Tonight, he could see what no one else in the room could, tonight, with the one beautiful gift that the youth is always lacking and never believes is of any value at all, just an old man’s excuse to keep on living when he should’ve expired long ago, oh, tonight that gift, that glorious perspective filled Brian’s entire soul and taught his eyes, and tonight, looking down on the next Brian Kinney, he didn’t feel bitter, tired, sad, old, or nostalgic; no, what he felt was more accurately described as pity.
The man below him was probably twenty-seven years old, old enough to have acquired the keys to power and dominance, young enough to inspire lust and awe in those who saw him, but Brian knew what no one else did, what the man himself didn’t know; Brian saw what was invisible to the world: the prison the man couldn’t escape; a prison made of pain, expectations, and endless, sweating fear.
Brian took a deep breath, rubbing his hand along his upper lip, shocked at the sting of tears in his eyes. He was looking at his own prison cell, staring it in the face, and seeing how easy it was to turn around and open the door; it had never been locked to begin with.
He retreated to the offices, shut the door on the pounding music, slipped into Natalie’s office, and called Justin.
“Brian, it’s the middle of the night,” Justin muttered, sleep making his deep voice even rougher.
“I know….”
“Where are you?”
“Babylon.”
“Ah,” Justin said and Brian could hear the mattress creak as he sat up in bed. “Calling to share the kinky details with me?”
“No.”
“Okay,” Justin said, confused. “Is everything all right? You sound strange.”
“I’m good. Really good, Sunshine. Best I’ve been in years.”
“All right….” Justin trailed off and Brian listened to him breath, the pounding of the dance music just a dull thud through the insulated walls. “So…why did you call?”
Brian put his head down on Natalie’s desk, cradling the phone next to his ear. “I called to thank you.”
“Thank me? For what?”
Brian hesitated, a crass joke on the tip of his tongue, but he thought of the man dancing downstairs, the next Brian Kinney trapped so tightly in his jail cell. “For showing me how fucking stupid it is to live in prison. For giving me a way out of…all of this. For letting me figure out how to get to freedom.”
Justin was silent for a few minutes while Brian waited breathlessly. Finally, he said, “Huh? What the fuck are you talking about?”
“That’s a dollar, Daddy,” Brian heard Belle’s sleepy voice murmur not far from the phone.
“Never mind. Just say…I don’t know, ‘you’re welcome’ or something.”
“You’re welcome,” Justin said and yawned.
“Belle’s in bed with you?”
“Nightmares.”
“Can I talk to her?”
“Only if you promise not to say incoherent and drunken things to her about prison.”
“I promise.”
“Belle, honey, Brian wants to talk to you.”
There were some scuffing sounds and then Belle’s voice slid over the phone line, sleep slow and husky. “Brian, are you coming home soon?”
“Soon, Belle, I promise.”
“Is your friend dead yet?”
“Belle!” Justin’s voice exclaimed in the background. “Honey, that’s not a nice thing to say, it’s rude.”
“Sorry. But, Brian, can your friend hurry up and die so you can come home?”
Brian smiled, shaking his head and a strange lump in his throat. “I want to come home, too.”
“Okay, will you also bring me a My Little Pony Dream Farm?”
“Anabelle Taylor, do not ask Brian for things like that. We talked about this. Please give Daddy the phone now.”
“Daddy wants the phone.” Belle lowered her voice to a whisper. “You can still get the Dream Farm, Brian. I won’t be mad.”
Brian chuckled as Justin got back on the phone.
“Brian, please don’t encourage her by getting the Dream Farm. She needs to learn to wait for things like other kids do.”
“Why, when her father and his partner have more money than God? She’s not any other kid; she’s Belle.”
“We can argue over parenting styles another day, maybe when it isn’t three in the morning.”
“Justin?”
“Yeah?”
“Goodnight.”
“I love you, too, ” Justin said, and the phone disconnected.
Brian hung up and sat staring at his hands, his lip in teeth, and a strange, open feeling in his chest. So odd that demands for a My Little Pony Dream Farm and an anticipated argument over parenting choices could feel more like freedom than years of unfettered promiscuity, drugs, and boundless physical pleasure.
Or maybe, Brian thought, it was simply that true freedom felt nearly identical to hope.
::::
Liberty Diner at three am looked just like all the other places from the outside looking in, warm like honey and inviting. Once inside, though, it was garish and loud, and suffering from a desperate lack of Debbie, though her touches could be seen everywhere, from the buttons all over the red vests of every waiter in the place, to the ridiculous homemade t-shirts they all wore professing their own personal logos.
Brian sat three booths down from the next Brian Kinney and his friends. He ordered a cup of coffee and thought about how a week with Justin had made him feel like the last time he’d seen this side of sunrise was a hundred years ago.
The next Brian Kinney lounged in the booth, one arm slung over the back, and a scrappy blond friend with glasses sitting next to him nattering on about which season of Heroes had had the best genetically superior superbeings. The brunet sitting across from them looked a few years older, and he appeared to be less than entirely engaged in Scrappy Glasses opinions on the now half-a-decade old television show.
Brian let his gaze wander, bored by the inanity of their conversation and the pity that he felt every time he looked at the poor next Brian Kinney trapped in his gilded cage. His eyebrows lifted as two older men came in, older than Brian even, probably in their fifites. They looked giddy, maybe high, and they were holding hands. Cowboy boots and big belt buckles, along with the heavy Texan accents when they ordered made it clear that they ‘weren’t from around here’. Brian watched as they sat down at the bar stools, their hands touching casually, their eyes glowing when they looked at each other.
“Look at those fucks, so fat and content,” Scrappy Glasses said, not bothering to lower his voice. “God, I hope I never get fat.”
“Or content,” the next Brian Kinney threw in, taking a long drag on his cigarette. “Ain’t it sweet?” he mocked, taking on the accent like he knew it well. “Wearing wedding rings just like breeders and out on the town. Probably just renewed their fucking vows.”
“I think I just threw up a little in my mouth,” Older Brunet chimed in.
“It’s the content part of the equation that gets ‘em,” the next Brian Kinney drawled on. “First they fall in love, or what they think is love, then they stop striving for anything more. And there you have it,” he gestured at the couple. “Content, fat fucks. Death would be preferable.”
Brian took another sip of coffee as a blond waiter burst through the kitchen door with plates of food in both hands. The next Brian Kinney’s eyes fell unerringly on the waiter and there was something there, something that made Brian’s stomach drop in a wave of déjà vu, but then it passed. The next Brian Kinney turned his head and took another drag on his cigarette and the waiter left the food at the table and moved on. And Brian knew. He knew it hadn’t happened to the next Brian Kinney yet. He hadn’t found a person who made him come back for more, made him start to feel something that scared the shit out him, made him maybe think that living right here, right now wasn’t going to break him into a million pieces, or not caring if it did.
Brian dropped money on the table and stood up walking out the door, knowing that when you’ve found contentment, what’s the point of striving for something more? If you’ve found a life that doesn’t hurt when you breathe, why would you want to reach for the pain again? He smiled, knowing the answer.
Because it all came down to whether or not you believed that you deserved it.
::::
Procede to PART FOUR