Work Text:
prologue :: practised at the art of deception
You're shirtless, sweaty, and waiting when Brian walks into Woody's with his friends. You slide up the bar next to him and tell him, too eagerly, that you get a free drink if you take your shirt off. Which you, clearly, have already done, and the drinks have all been free since, and they've gone a little to your head.
Brian looks you over, sneers at you. He tells you he doesn't show his tits for a watered down Bud, and then he turns away.
You feel like everything is wrong, you're saying the wrong thing, you're doing the wrong thing, and you want to start over, try again, but Brian is already busy pretending he doesn't know you, and when he leaves, it's without you, and you're not entirely sure why or what happened.
times one :: you can't always get what you want
You stare at yourself impassively in the three-way mirror while the tailor whirls around with his tape, and your mother flutters and makes clucking noises, except in a sort of dignified manner, a move perfected over years of Christmas parties and house christenings and charity events and 19th hole brunches. You look fucking great, and all three of you know it. Andre finishes brushing you off, hands somewhat whipping away when Jennifer clears her throat and pointedly turns her head. You finally grin.
"It looks great, Andre. I really can't thank you enough." Your mother turns you this way and that, and she is fairly glowing with excitement. You'd think she was the one going to senior prom, not you, but what you don't realise is that it's pride, not anticipation. But for the moment, you feel guilty for not being even as excited as your mother. It's Brian's fault.
"Oh, Justin, you look just wonderful. Just wonderful." You pull away when she starts picking at your hair.
"Mom, I need to put my clothes back on."
You take one last satisfied look at yourself before shedding the tuxedo for street clothes, wondering not for the first time if you look much like your father did for his senior prom. Then you remember you hate your father, and you stop thinking about him. While you press the jacket into the garment bag (marked boldly 'Andre's', Brian'd referred you), you wonder what Brian would look like in a tuxedo -- you've seen him in just about everything else by now, but then you remember you're mad at Brian, and you unsuccessfully, as you have for the past few days, try to stop thinking about him, too.
It's not that you're so much mad at Brian. You've tried to be understanding. Brian is freaking out about being thirty, and you know prom puts into perspective not so much your age (never really a problem, you muse), but his own. After all, not everyone can be as young and cute and have such a perfect ass as you.
You walk out to find your mother telling Mrs. Martelli (Andre's mother, not wife) that she, too, did not understand why her darling Andre had never taken a bride. She thanks Mrs. Martelli for her wishes that her beautiful son would marry a beautiful girl and hustles you both out, and you turn back to drop a cheeky wink at the tiny older lady.
"I could go tell her why her darling Andre never took a bride, Mom."
You're pretty relieved when she laughs.
"You could do no such thing, Justin Taylor."
Jennifer stops the car in Debbie's driveway and hesitates for a moment before getting out. You're somewhat annoyed -- she's still your mother, for Christ's sake -- but you urge her on with a "C'mon, Mom, I don't have all night. I know you'll need another dose of your eldest born in formal wear in about two hours. Why don't you come in and have a glass of wine with Deb?" She does, and you follow her in, bag in hand.
You stifle a laugh when your mother not-so-imperceptively braces herself for Debbie's embrace. You're next, and Debbie snatches the bag from you with a loud smack of her lips against your left cheek.
"Let's see the monkey suit, Sunshine."
Their exuberance is catching, and you grab the Andre's bag back, opening it with a flourish and a wide grin.
Vic whistles and catcalls from the staircase, and it's funny the way all of your heads turn. You give him a lascivious leer and a brief hug as you brush by him on your way up to your room. Michael's room. Your room. It's really both of yours, really and truly, and you respect that (even if Brian doesn't.) The picture of Brian and Michael at seventeen catches your eye the way it always does, and you think you'll put a picture of yourself and Daphne from tonight next to it once they're developed.
You think fondly on Daphne while you put on your bathrobe and grab your towel from the floor where you'd left it the night before. On your way into the bathroom, you call far too casually down to your mother, "Hey, Mom! I forgot Daphne's corsage! I'm so sorry! Can you go pick it up?" and continue into your shower.
You think about Brian while the steam billows around you, and the last time you fucked in the shower at the loft, and while you jerk off with one hand and cover your own mouth with the other, it's not until you imagine Brian in a tuxedo, and the two of you dancing at prom, that you come.
Your eyes roll back in your head, and for a moment, everything fades to black.
When you wake up in the hospital a few days later, you think, "How embarrassing. Did I fall in the fucking shower?" But when you look at your mom, she's wearing different clothes, and she looks fucking tired. It's when you try to ask her what happened that you realise there's a tube in your throat. It's when you try to touch it that you realise your right hand doesn't work so well, and that is when you lose it.
Jennifer cries and rushes out when you begin thrashing. You'll find out later that she doesn't think you're awake; you've had a few seizures in your unconscious state. A nurse comes in with her, takes one look at you, and rushes back out. You presume it's for the doctor.
It is. He comes in, a nice looking older man, and he's looking at you concernedly, and you just want to know what the fuck is going on. Then, out of nowhere, you realise you're missing prom, and wouldn't Brian give you shit for it when you'd pouted miserably at him for his refusal to attend with you. The doctor nods, apparently having decided you are indeed awake and to try taking the tube out of your mouth, and the nurse cautiously reaches for the plastic mouthpiece and tape holding it down. His eyes flicker over you, your head, really, and his hands avoid the entire right side of your body, and you're really kind of scared now.
"What is the last thing you remember, Justin?" The doctor, Dr. James Larson apparently, according to his nametag, sits next to your bed and poises a pen over his notepad. You flush briefly and answer in a harsh voice, "I was taking a shower and getting ready for prom."
Your mother lets out a broken sob as the doctor explains that it's now Wednesday ("but prom was Saturday," you think confusedly) and that you've been unconscious since late Saturday evening.
Wait. Late Saturday evening?
"What happened?" Jesus, your throat hurts and everything comes out hoarse, it hurts like a motherfucker to talk at all.
Dr. Larson's eyes flicker over to Jennifer, and he tells you that it's something better off explained by her. You quietly try to keep from hysterically freaking out -- your hand, the tube, the missing days, and really, the missing hours. Late Saturday evening?
"Mom."
You know in that moment that telling you whatever happened is the very last thing Jennifer Taylor has ever wanted to do in her life, so much so that you briefly, strangely feel like telling her to forget it, it's not important, but then she does begin to speak.
"Justin." She fights to steady her voice. "You went with Daphne to the prom." Now her tone is flat. "You both looked just amazing. But apparently, Brian showed up towards the end of the night."
Your eyes fly to meet hers head on, and you watch as she very visibly fights the urge to pull away from your gaze.
"And you danced together. Daphne says..." Your mother is choking on her words, and you're torn between absolutely needing her to go on and definitely having heard enough. She sets her face resolutely, and any chance you have to stop her is gone. "Daphne says you were so happy. And then you left. Another student followed you to the car park and hit you with a baseball bat. Brian called the ambulance."
Brian. "Brian."
"He's just stepped out." Jennifer's voice is a different shaky. "But Daphne and um. Emmett are here. Debbie will be here in an hour or so. We've been staying with you in shifts, sort of. You see, no one had any idea when you'd wake up, but you couldn't be alone, no. No." She's rambling emotionally now, but you want Brian. And it hits you.
Brian came to prom.
And you can't remember.
A week and a half more in the hospital after you regain consciousness, weeks more of outpatient rehab, daily fascination with watching your own skull heal. No Brian, and then a guiltridden, changed Brian. You can't let him touch you, but at least he can get closer than everyone else. You wonder sometimes if you're hurting Jennifer on purpose, but you can't imagine why you would.
It's Gus' first birthday when a perfectly innocent child's swing of a plastic bat shows you exactly why Brian's dying to forget the only thing you want to remember.
Brian catches you before you hit the ground, you fall clutching your head and remembering every painful minute of the bashing and after, the brief few seconds you regained consciousness in the ambulance, and how you felt when you woke up and he wasn't there, and he didn't come.
times two :: you can't always get what you want
You don't feel or look any different the morning you're a year past legal. You inspect yourself in the mirror, turning to look from every angle, and yep, you're still an adorable piece of blond boy ass. Brian doesn't say 'Happy Birthday,' but you'd like to think maybe the incredibly hot blowjob in the shower says it for him. Probably not. Brian has devoutly sworn off birthdays (except for his thirtieth, apparently), and that includes yours.
Your clothes fit the same at 19, your coffee tastes the same. You think absently, "Not that nineteen is anything to look forward to," while you rinse your mug and set it in the sink. Suddenly, out of nowhere, you're irrationally angry. Excuse you if you think your nineteenth birthday is still a big deal. You're legal in Canada or something. And it's your fucking birthday. Also, fuck you, Brian.
He drops you off at school, where even two of your professors wish you a happy birthday. In your pen and ink class, you sketch Brian with a huge nose, unibrow, and tiny cock, and you decide you'll give it to him on his 31st. You feel only slightly better, and your hand is cramping pretty badly. Your head hurts, and you just want to go home.
You don't equate "Happy Birthday" with "I love you," but you think Brian might. On a computer like yours at home, you manipulate the image of U2's heart suitcase into a present with a bow; the result is distorted and barely recognisable. You decide you'll use it for the card to go with the sketch.
Before you go home, you stop by the diner, where Debbie promptly announces to all of Liberty Avenue that it's your birthday and serves you two lemon bars with candles stuck in the top and a "Happy birthday, Sunshine!"
As you raise your fork to dig in, Deb asks, "So what are you doing for the big one-nine?"
"Melanie and Lindsay are taking me to a concert. Some young violinist." She notices when you don't mention Brian, and her eyes harden. Yours do so in response.
"That asshole is really refusing to do something for your birthday? He's fuckin' lucky you're alive, Sunshine, and he should fuckin' realise."
You don't need Debbie to tell you what you already know. You shrug and take a bite of a lemon bar. She takes the not-so-subtle hint, kisses the top of your head, pretends to gag at the product, and walks away. You quickly finish your dessert and endure many pinches on your ass on your way out the door. You hail a cab back to the loft and pay for it with the customary $20 Brian'd pressed into your hand this morning for this very purpose, and you're angry again.
"I'm not his fucking ward." You seethe as you pound the stairs. "Not his responsibility. Fuck whatever he thinks." You shove the loft door open. "I'm his fucking boyfriend. And it's his boyfriend's fucking birthday."
But then Mel and Linds come, and Brian ties your tie and sort of opens up a little bit while he does it, and you're happy and frustrated all at once. You're glad when you leave for the concert, but you don't think about much on the ride.
Why couldn't he say Happy fucking Birthday and mean it?
The munchers make appropriate noises of outrage and disgust about Brian's simple lack of acknowledgment, and you feel better and slightly more justified in your internal Brian anger. You don't like the way Mel's eyes get a slightly vindicated look as she pointedly casts them in Lindsay's direction, but her issues with Brian are between her and Brian, and her and Lindsay. Not you. Besides, you're having your own issues with one Mr. Kinney, in case anyone in the tristate area hadn't noticed.
You walk into the small concert auditorium and take your seats near the front. You don't really know from violin music, but the guy is young and hot, and you're pretty sure he's talented. You're pretty much blown away, and you keep thinking that he's looking at you.
After the concert, the hot, young violinist makes his way over to you. You quickly take a peek at your program again.
His name is Ethan Gold.
You don't like his grin from the moment you mention surprise and throw your arms around him. Brian leads you up to the bedroom and sneers "Happy birthday, Sunshine" at you when he presents you with a hot young guy ("hustler!" your mind screams "expensive!") wearing nothing but a prominent bow.
He got you a present after all. This is how Brian does birthdays.
When you're walking through the music building a few days later, you follow the sound of a violin into a practice room and find Ethan Gold there. He hits on you, and you feel a sort of rosy glow on your cheeks when you leave for class.
So you meet Ethan, and he makes you feel special. He tells you that you're the only one he wants. You get romantic notions of living together as starving artists, living on love. You cheat on Brian, and you hate yourself for it, but you justify it. You tell yourself that it's not different from his tricking, that he's bringing it on himself, anything to get yourself through the day.
Finally, Brian makes you choose. You choose Ethan, you tell yourself that Ethan's love is enough, that he loves you and Brian didn't.
Then one night, after you've been together a little while, a guy Ethan fucked at a show you weren't supposed to go to because your boyfriend is a willing closet case shows up at the apartment with roses. You leave and never look back.
You go to Daphne's, but you want to go to Brian's.
Eventually, you do.
times three :: you can't always get what you want
You wake up halfway through the subconscious act of survival known as throwing your alarm clock across the room to shut it off because it's ass o'clock in the morning for God's sake, and you've already broken three since you moved to California doing the exact same thing. You wonder if it's a good thing you can't throw Brian. As you climb out of bed and stumble towards the bathroom in what can't even be considered pre-dawn light, you scrub your face and think that this is the sixty-third day you've been in California, and you wonder if that one pair of jeans with the hole in the right leg are clean enough to wear to work for the second time this week.
Tom wants Starbucks upon his arrival, which you expect and fetch, because it means you might get to work on the set some time next week. This is how it works in the art department on Rage, and Tom let you know that your first day. You thought it showed how much you'd grown up when you didn't queen out and stomp your feet and declare that Rage was yours and how dare he treat you this way. You didn't talk to Brett about it, you do the shit work Tom assigns you and you keep a sharp eye on everything.
This is how it feels to both hate and love your job, you think as you haul sketches from one department to another, and it takes all of your willpower not to stop and press the boards against the wall, using your own never used pen to make necessary edits to someone else's sketches of Rage. These boards are not your comic book, you remind yourself every day. You drop them with the prop department and resist the urge to wander on set for a moment, you know they're shooting on a backlot not far off this week, but Tom will expect you back immediately, probably to shine his shoes or take notes on some brilliant set idea he has for the lair or wash his brushes and say thank you, sir. Or whatever.
You work eighteen hour days, and you're tired. You went out exactly three times when you first got to Los Angeles, you live with a couple of guys from costume in West Hollywood, but then you decided it was too much of a hassle. Robbie and Todd call you a pussy and go out at least four nights a week. You can't afford to go out four nights a week, you can make your rent and your groceries and your cel phone bill, and that's it, but even with all of the staying in and cooking for yourself and no sleep and no fun and god, no fucking, you're not unhappy.
Because even if someone else is drawing Rage and someone else is dictating to you their ideas about Rage's lair, Rage is still yours, yours and Michael's, and you get to have your hands on it, and you get to tell yourself you're protecting it somehow by just being there. And you're doing it on your own, fiercely.
When you first got here, you called home three times a week. You did that for exactly two and a half weeks. You called Brian three times a week, and he was candid about work and your family and he told you he missed you, and that made you want to go home more than anything. A month in, and you were lucky to get in two times a week. You were getting home later and later, and two o'clock in Los Angeles is five o'clock in Pittsburgh, which is an ungodly hour for anyone to wake up. Brian would do it for you, but you don't want him to have to. And sometimes he doesn't pick up when you do.
Now it's just over three months, and it's actually been closer to two weeks since the last time you talked to Brian. You've each left a couple halfhearted phone tags. You actually talked to Michael a few days ago, who demanded you talk about Rage in great detail and then broke in every five seconds with comments about Hunter and Ben and Jenny Rebecca, and you were too embarrassed to ask about Brian, and Mikey, you know, would think you knew everything there was to know about Brian, and Brian would never insinuate otherwise. You miss Brian sharply and all at once, and so you try to call.
His phone rings four times and goes to voicemail. You hang up before the beep and go to bed.
Seventy days in Los Angeles, and when your cel phone rings, you don't wake up to stop yourself from throwing it across the room.
It's two in the afternoon, and it's Robbie waking you up, wearing a perplexed and somewhat concerned face.
"Justin."
"Okay, I'm up."
"You might want to just lie there for a moment. I just got a call from Antoine."
Antoine, you know only because you hear his name fifty thousand times a day at home, is the head of the costume unit on Rage.
And suddenly you know before he even tells you.
You hop up and fumble around for your phone, finding it quickly but flipping it open to reveal a dead battery. You plug it into the charger next to your bed and call voicemail.
Two new messages. First new message, from Brian, who was "returning your call" and would "try again later". Your heart twists a little bit at the short tone he'd adopted, but you press seven to delete the message and go on to the next.
Second new message, from Brett, who tells you curtly that filming on Rage has been canceled and that while he's really busy today, he'll try to call you tomorrow to talk about it. You try to call Brett, and when it goes to voicemail midway through the second ring, you know he's ignoring you. And you know before anyone can deny it that while everyone on set might be surprised, Brett's known for at least a little while. You know it.
You pick up your sketch pad for only the second time since your arrival in California, and you spend the rest of the day in bed drawing Brian's cock from memory.
When Brett calls the next morning, you end your regression back to seventeen and become a man again, nodding silently into the cel phone and noting but ignoring the somehow nervous yet slick "I'm so lying" tone he's using. You understand that sometimes these things happen, you say, and for the first time, it hits you, and now it really hurts. You press END and set the phone down on the coffee table and look at your ghostly self in its glass top. Everything about your face tells you that you failed, and you know it's true.
You failed Michael and Brian and Liberty Avenue and the gay community worldwide and yourself. And while you were always planning to go back, now you've got to. You have to go.
So you catch the Liberty Air redeye out of LAX, you'd demanded Brett buy the ticket immediately during that last phone call and then you'd made sure your third of everything was paid up for the rest of the month and said goodbye, and when Michael opens the door rubbing his eyes like a five-year-old, you don't blame him because the redeye out of LAX puts you at his front door at approximately 6:45 in the morning. You follow him into the apartment and make him swear he won't tell anyone (and by anyone, you mean Brian, and he knows it) you're here yet.
And then you tell him that Rage the movie is over, and he nods like he knew as soon as you were at his front door. Which he had, which you know. You tell him that you intend to sleep on his couch for a few days, and that again, absolutely no one is to know you're here. Obviously, absolutely no one excludes Ben and Hunter, but you're not worried about Ben and Hunter. You're worried about Mikey's big fat fucking mouth. You just need a few days first.
Michael kind of sets his face determinedly, and you're struck by how much he can resemble Debbie sometimes, and agrees not to tell Brian. He gets you a pillow and a blanket and then, as if on impulse, he hugs you and tells you, "Welcome home, Justin." But his voice is sort of sad when he says it, and you're sort of sad to hear it.
When he wakes up, Ben hugs you for about ten minutes and tells you that you look tired and then goes into the kitchen to, you suppose, fetch you vitamins and a protein shake and something healthy and Asian and will turn you into the man you used to be in no time at all. When he wakes up, Hunter patiently hears Mikey out as he explains that you don't want anyone to know you're here and then threatens every four minutes or so to tell Brian you're back. Hunter might be straight, but he still wants to blow Brian, and you both know it.
You turn off your cel phone and sit on the couch and sketch all day, resting when your hand hurts and when Michael brings you diner food and when you sleep, and that's it.
On the third morning you're back in Pittsburgh, you're closer to sleep than wake when you hear Mikey refuse to open up, a sudden jangle of keys, and then the sharp slam of a quickly shut door. When you do wake up, you tell yourself you imagined the quiet, resigned sigh and Michael's worried look at you as he hurried back to his room. You'll go that afternoon.
Brian's at his computer when you let yourself into the loft later. You set your suitcase down inside the door and close it behind you and wait for his eyes to meet yours. When they do, you say, "I'm home."
And he repeats, "You're home."
times four :: but if you try sometimes, you just might find
"Tell Mel and Gus and Jenny Rebecca and everyone that we love them."
"Of course. Take care of yourself, Justin, and of Brian, of course. Love you, honey."
"Love you, too, Linds."
You hang up the phone and stare blankly at your computer screen for what feels like three hours. You grip the stylus and wait for inspiration to come. It's not going so well so far. You decide to fuck it and watch tv. You need to get to bed soon anyway, you start prepping for a new show at the gallery tomorrow. Brian is, of course, not home yet.
You're watching an old Friends rerun, the second half of the one in Vegas, when you hear his key in the door. You check the clock, whose face is happy to tell you with its simple beauty that it's 1:57 in the morning. You're pretty sure Brian left for the office at 7:30, and though you'd never ever say so, he looks like it.
"Hey, Sunshine."
You turn the set off and get up to kiss Brian hello. You pour you each a drink while he changes his clothes, all the while talking to you through your open bedroom door about these "assholes in New York" and how if he has to talk to one more "arrogant, ignorant, non-creative, mass produced advertising graduate," he'll blow. You make the obligatory blow joke. He comes back out of the bedroom and kisses you hello for real and then adopts a housewife's falsetto to ask about your day. You tell him about hauling crates for the show that starts being prepped tomorrow and how you don't really like the artist, but that it will be a fun exhibit to hang.
When you turn the conversation to your earlier phone call with Lindsay, Brian finishes his drink and in a manner pretty much opposite of subtle leads you to the bedroom by the crotch. Actually, it's the first time you've fucked in a few days, so you're hot and ready, but somehow, while Brian's doing some sort of magic with his tongue, you manage to think about how you never thought the time would come that it would be the first time in days that you'd fucked (except, you know, when you were in a coma, or with Ethan, or in California, or Brian had cancer, or whatever), but the last almost eleven months in New York have taken their toll on both of you.
He comes, and you come, and clean up and say goodnight and I love you.
You're showering off drywall dust when Brian comes home the next night. He's home early enough for the two of you to go out for a late dinner, so you walk to the Thai place a few blocks down. Over sticky rice, you talk again about Lindsay and everyone on Liberty Avenue, and how you're actually pretty glad you're going home in a month, even though you love your job and the city and everything. Brian stares at his plate for exactly a millisecond and then meets your gaze head on to tell you that it's going to be a few more months before he can go back to Pittsburgh.
"Brian."
"Justin, things are just not at a point yet where I can leave. Not much longer. It can't be helped."
"Brian, it's not like it's really an option for me." You struggle to watch your volume. "You said a year, and I agreed to come because we're partners, and we do this together, but you also agreed to a year."
"I know what I agreed to, Justin, but I can't just leave. You don't think I want to go? I'm sure Theodore's run my office into the ground and he's blackmailing Cynthia not to tell me. But I can't. It's not ready."
You stab at your Pad Thai with short motions. "Brian, I can't stay a few more months. Term starts." You're almost twenty-four years old, and you're finally going to get your undergraduate degree. Probably.
"Well, you have to go where you want to be."
"Fuck you, Brian, that doesn't fucking work anymore, not for me, and not for you. If it's only a few more months' work, why don't you come home and commute twice a week like we talked about that one time?"
"It's only a few more months' work if I'm here to do it."
It's a stalemate, and you briefly, irrationally take it as a metaphor for your whole relationship, you will never come first with Brian. "I have to go back, Brian."
He nods, pauses, and nods again.
In the morning, Brian makes your air reservations for three weeks later, to give you a week in the Pitts before the term at PIFA starts. You don't really talk about it much, except when he tells you to make sure the mail, with an offhand but pointed comment about your joint account statement, continue to be forwarded to him in New York. You know that this means he's going to make sure there's enough money in the small account you share for you to live on while in school. You already live at the loft, it's just been empty without the two of you. Brian calls the bursar's office to pay your tuition, and that's that. You're all set to go back.
The morning you're to leave is just like any other, including the phone call Brian gets for an emergency meeting with some account he's been hot after since before you came here, one of the accounts he set his sights on when planning the NYC launch. He kisses you with coffee breath and swears he'll be back as soon as possible.
You finish packing the little things, the toiletries, and when it gets to the point that you'll be probably a little too late for your flight, you say fuck him and grab your two bags. You instruct the cabbie to get you to LaGuardia immediately or sooner. He does. You wait for Brian to at least call and tell you goodbye, and he doesn't.
The loft always seems bigger and emptier without Brian in it, whether it's for a night or for this indeterminate length of "a few months." You see everyone, a lot. Someone is always at the loft, you're always being called somewhere. Every day for the first four days you're back. You continue settling back in, going to chat with the professors you'd be having for the second time, eager to hear about the advanced levels of their courses. You gain four pounds, you swear, on lemon bars and greasy diner food.
On the morning of the day before classes start, you wake up to the loft door sliding back and Brian calling "Wakey wakey, Sunshine!" You're half confused and half convinced you're imagining it, so you sit up and open your eyes to be immediately assaulted and pinned to the bed.
"Brian, what are you doing here?" You'd just talked to him the night before, though your conversation had probably only consisted of "hello," "goodbye," and "I miss you, I love you" outside of the mindblowingly hot phone sex he called nightly for. And he hadn't mentioned this.
"It's been three months, I'm due for a visit." He says it like you should have assumed he'd be there.
You had been coming on regular visits, but you weren't expecting him to come now, today. You're a little ashamed to think that he was mostly taking the visits for you, tagging along because you wanted to come see your family, and plus, you'd just left New York. And you're still pissed that he didn't take you to the airport and didn't even call to say goodbye.
He jerks you, literally, out of your mini-reverie, and you're disgustingly glad he's here for now. You can be an angry princess later.
The two of you go to brunch at Mel and Linds', where Brian talks eagerly (well, eagerly for Brian) about landing the account he'd been chasing and the new account manager he'd hired and how he would for sure be home in two months or so. You watch him with his son, and hear him trade barbs with Mel, and his manner with everyone is the same as it's ever been, and you realise it's you who feels differently about it. You see it differently.
You half-heartedly pick a fight over his not taking you to the airport. "You didn't even say goodbye, asshole."
"Well, that pompous prick Jones practically had my nuts, both real and artificial, as garnish for his three-martini lunch, but we got the account. So I just have a few more hires, and I really will be home in two months." He leaves out the "I told you so," but you hear it loud and clear.
"I had to come home, Brian." You leave yours off, too. "And I know you had to stay, and I know you had to come today, and I know none of it has to do with me."
Brian looks at you, and you shake your head. "No, I didn't mean it that way. You came to see me. And you came to see Mikey, and your son, and Lindsay, and even Ted. Because you wanted to."
You pause for a minute. "And you'll come home to me, and us, in a couple of months." Because it all comes first with Brian, and you really know that for the first time now.
You joke about refusing to take him to the airport, and he swats your ass and throws the keys to Mel's Subaru at you. Brian kisses you goodbye at the security checkpoint, taking care to position the two of you directly in front of the security guard while he does so. It's people who do and don't change, and situations arise from that.
"Don't keep my half of the bed warm while I'm gone."
"You either."
His housewife's falsetto tells you "Goodbye, honey!" and then he's on the plane.
the end :: you get what you need
Brian hands you a sheaf of papers over breakfast on your twenty-seventh birthday. You flip through them, noting where the flags are, and say "Well, good, because I need a new pair of glasses, and your insurance is better than mine."
You read the contracts that don't use words like partner but that's what they mean, and you consider signing them all 'Justin Taylor-Kinney' just to piss him off, but you settle for dotting the i with a heart and hand the paperwork back to Brian.
"You'll give them to Melanie?"
"Yeah, tonight."