I sincerely hope my beta will not be pissed for me being impatient and posting this un-betaed. I've been itching to get it out for two months now...
While I didn't update, I was being busy moving my belongings from Germany to England, working an awful lot and yeah, enjoying time with friends who are now abroad themselves.
My planning looks like there's going to be one more part to this...
Enjoy this one!
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Faintest Spark, VI
Brian doesn’t return that day.
Justin thinks ‚just as well’ and goes to his studio and paints. It’s angry and upset and the choice of colors, a mixture of orange and a deep purple, almost black only puts emphasis on the confused state of his mind.
Of course, he wanted, still wants Brian, which is out of question. But why he was stupid enough to think that one night would change reality and male Brian take him back is beyond his understanding.
No matter what Brian has done to break them up years ago, Justin is sure it wouldn’t occur to him as unforgivable as it might have seemed at the time. As his brush scrapes across the canvas, he sets his mind on finding out what happened. Only the one person who could help him doesn’t return for dinner.
Justin is not the least bit worried. Brian has never been one to apologize or talk, so Justin does not expect to see him any time soon, unless he goes looking for Brian.
A week passes in that manner: When Justin doesn’t feel inspired enough to paint he goes about exploring the house, the backyard, the entire estate.
It’s one thought that unsettles him for hours. He doesn’t know where it comes from but it feels like a déjà-vu. It is as if he can hear his voice echoing in his head. ‘Did Brian ever ride me in the stables?’
Justin leans against the huge gate of the barn and stares across the land that belongs to the property. He starts laughing, the noise bubbling out of him uncontrollably until his sides ache and his lungs gasp for air. He laughs about himself and his stupidity of turning Brian down, turning this down: Their own Garden of Eden, their safe haven. Justin thinks it’s highly ironic that once they were at a point where their interests weren’t clashing but pleasantly meeting, he wouldn’t want that anymore.
During lunch that day, the telephone rings.
Justin considers letting it roll to voice mail but he is too curious who this might be as only his mother or Brian call him at the mansion. Sure, Brian didn’t call in the week which passed since his departure but before that he called regularly.
However, it’s Cynthia’s voice that greets him at the other end. She tells him Brian wants him in the office at three in the afternoon, no but or no accepted. Justin sighs but agrees.
He is curious to find out what Brian might want from him and is surprised, to say the least, when he finds out.
A child comes running at him the moment Justin steps into the office. It can only be Gus – because he looks shockingly like his father and Justin secretly wonders how Melanie likes that.
Justin considers picking Gus up from the floor for a moment because that is what grown-ups do with kids, right? But maybe, at six, Justin thinks, Gus is too old for that. So Justin crouches down in front of him and Gus wraps his arms around Justin’s neck.
Though he would never admit it, Justin’s eyes burn with unshed tears. He’s glad to see Gus, yes, but it hurts to see Gus having grown so much. It is as if Gus is the incarnation of Justin’s lost memory, the past years having suddenly acquired a bodily form.
“Justin?” His head whips up when Brian, having appeared out of nowhere, says his name.
“Hey,” Justin mutters and blushes
“Come to my office for a minute. Cynthia, can you keep an eye on Gus?”
Justin follows Brian through the doors to his office and looks around.
He should have known; he simply should have known that it was Brian who’d bought the canvas, the one they’d been staring at during the show.
It’s there, hanging right over the white couch in Brian’s office.
Brian’s lips slowly form an ‘oh’ at Justin’s bemused look. “I liked it.”
No, Justin thinks, you didn’t. You were afraid someone else would be able to read it the way you do.
“I want you to watch Gus. Someone fucked up the schedule of the latest campaign and I have to stay here.” Justin snaps out of his thoughts.
“But –“ Justin wants to protest, wants to say ‘But I don’t know what Gus likes, I don’t know him.’
Brian shakes his head. “He loves you, Justin. He’d sit and watch you paint if he had to – just as long as you’re around.”
“The zoo? Does he like it?” Justin asks. It’s the only place he can think of right now and he, for sure, liked it there when he was Gus’ age.
“Brilliant idea.” Brian confirms and looks at Justin as if he’s going to say more. Justin almost asks ‘why?’ into the occurring silence but then he thinks better of it and asks when to drop Gus off at the loft.
Brian walks around the edge of his desk and stands close to Justin, and then puts a hand on the back of Justin’s neck.
“You’re not taking him to the loft. Pick up his things from Grandma Debbie’s, then take him home. Brian leans his forehead against Justin’s, a habitual gesture he missed during the last years.
“Okay,” Justin mumbles, closing his eyes, waiting for Brian to kiss him. But Brian pulls away as the door to his office swings open with a squeak.
“Bri – oh, Justin, hey. I didn’t know you were here,” Ted says apologetically, and excuses himself.
“Theodore!” Brian calls after him. It takes only one glare at Ted for him to understand that he’s not to mention to anyone what he just witnessed.
Whether it is coincidence or fate, Justin doesn’t know but when he gets back to Britin, after a long day with Gus, he finds a letter from Kevin in the mailbox.
He puts the TV on for Gus to watch some cartoons and then opens the plain white envelope with shaky fingers. He can already tell what it is without having to read it.
It was really only a matter of time until Kevin would send his parting letter and the way he writes he seems incredibly reasonable and understanding. He doesn’t ask for anything, not money, not even to be paid his share of the apartment. He leaves it all to Justin ‘because of the adjoining studio space’ although he suspects Justin will move back to Pittsburgh eventually. Furthermore, he writes, he has moved most of his belongings out of their home
Although he should probably feel bad about it, relief floods Justin and he takes a deep breath and smiles.
“What brings on that smile, Sunshine?” Once more that day, Brian seems to appear out of thin air and startles Justin.
Justin simply shrugs and stuffs the letter into the back pocket of his jeans.
Gus is all over Brian, telling him about his exciting day at the zoo with Justin.
While father and son talk, Justin goes into the kitchen to put out the light dinner the maid prepared for them in the afternoon.
Gus does not want to go to bed that night, he’s rather stay up with Justin and Brian and watch more cartoons. But Brian is determined to put Gus to sleep – Melanie will have his one remaining ball of he doesn’t – and Justin helps.
Then they part ways and although Justin leaves on the light in his room and waits for a few minutes whether maybe Brian comes over, nothing happens.
Brian has taken three days off from work which he intends to spend with Gus – and Justin but of course, he never asks Justin to tag along himself. Gus does the talking for him, refusing to go anywhere without Justin.
The three of them are at the diner when one of those sentences echoes through Justin’s head again. “I told him he could see me in his dreams.”
He freezes for a second but then continues stirring in his milkshake.
Brian gives him a funny look and Justin knows he’ll have to fess up soon.
After the third day, they drop Gus off at Debbie’s. The kid enjoys spending time with his grandma and it gives both Brian and Justin a night off to work on their projects.
Justin is itching to paint a much happier picture than he previously started. Gus’ presence suddenly filled him with happiness and he is what links Brian and Justin together at the moment.
Justin almost gives up hope that Brian will come home when he isn’t there at nine o’clock in the evening that night. He sits in his studio looking at sketches. There is a huge box filled with sketchpads and Justin has started working his way through all of them, hoping that something will jog his brain. Page after page, charcoal line after line the past years fly by but nothing, nothing helps –
Then he gasps. The sketch, two bodies, naked, legs entwined. One of them is clearly Brian but Justin wonders who the other body belongs to. He spots the birthmark right above the navel and thinks he has seen it somewhere. He turns a few pages back and there it is, right in between a few drawings if strange people: Kevin sprawled out on a couch, the birthmark a detail Justin didn’t miss out on.
He closes the pad and tosses it back on the stack, then picks it up again and tears out that fateful sketch.
How is it possible that Kevin and Brian – how? Justin wonders if he’d drawn it, imagined it or if he’d actually witnessed the fuck. Had he had any part in it?
He stuffs the paper into his pocket when he hears a car coming up the drive way. HE stays put where he is, in his studio. Brian will pretend he didn’t come looking for Justin but that he saw that there was still light on.
Justin sits and stares at the used table top when the door eventually opens. Brian’s hand grabs the back of his neck, fingers weaving through Justin’s golden hair. Brian leans over his shoulder to see what keeps Justin occupied. The gesture is far more affectionate than Brian would ever admit.
“Justin?” Brian asks when he discovers that there’s nothing lying before Justin.
Justin gets up from his chair and walks around the table. He needs to bring distance between them. All he wants is to know, know the truth, and know everything that made his life turn the way it has taken.
“Did you fuck Kevin?”
Brian rolls his lips into his mouth. He takes way too long to answer which is why Justin figures there’s more to it.
“I want the truth, Brian. Don’t you dare and lie to me now.”
Brian starts pacing the room. There’s only little space for doing so because most of the floor is covered in cloths splattered with paint.
“Well, yeah. I did and I enjoyed every minute of it. And so did you, Sunshine.”
“But-“
“Why? You brought him back to the hotel. You’d picked him up –“
Justin stumbles a few paces backwards.
Memories, small, fragmented pieces come back to him. Decadent chandeliers, gentlemen dressed in the finest yarn. The smell of expensive cologne, the feel of two bodies surrounding him, encompassing his being.
Justin remembers how both had fought for his attention, how Brian had won, knowing Justin’s body like his own and every spot eliciting a moan from his lips.
He suddenly can hear himself ask Kevin for his plans for the night, in the lowest of voices, and suggesting a threesome all by himself.
Justin saw Kevin off at the door afterwards and Kevin slipped him his number, boldly overstepping the boundaries laid out beforehand by kissing Justin on the mouth.
Admittedly, Justin was impressed and now, he isn’t surprised that he called Kevin.
“Did I tell you?” He wants to know whether Brian knew he kept meeting Kevin on a friendly basis.
“No, you didn’t. You said you’d made a few friends. I didn’t bother asking what kind of friends.” Brian remembers the night Justin finally told him he had met someone he felt differently about.
”He’s here, Brian. He’s available. He listens when I talk. We talk. We actually have arguments.” It hurt but it was the truth at the time. Brian was preoccupied with chasing accounts, accounts which were important in the financing of his New York branch of Kinnetik, but of course, he never told Justin.
Justin ran out of patience with him, and Brian couldn’t blame him. He wasn’t ready to let go of Justin though and asked to still see him as long as Justin didn’t flaunt his affair in Brian’s face.
So Justin tinkered with Kevin who became Brian’s biggest competitor in advertising on the East Coast. Justin knew all of that but told himself that he couldn’t change his feelings.
It all went well and secretly.
Justin remembers it all too well now.
It worked out fine until a week before the solo show the ArtForum photo of him and Kevin on his arm. Brian felt betrayed but told himself if was his own fault for never questioning Justin’s affair.
Justin vowed to break up things with Kevin because he was certain that ultimately, his place was by Brian’s side. He told Kevin not to show up at his show on the opening night.
Kevin did.
Brian disappeared from the gallery and Justin expected him to have taken the next flight back to Pittsburgh. He didn’t anticipate for Brian to take home a trick to Justin’s apartment. Not even a trick – but to pay Justin back, Justin’s competitor in the New York art scene. Justin found them as he stumbled into his place drunk on champagne and success. Brian was fucking the shit out of the poor guy who didn’t know what he’d gotten himself into as soon as Justin found the words to shout at Brian.
When Justin remembers overprized Whiskey tumblers fly out of the window of his apartment on the 12th floor, his head starts to spin. Suddenly, his head feels so heavy that he can’t even stand up straight. He stumbles out of his studio into the dark hallway.
The padding of naked feet over the hard wood echoes in the silence. Brian rushes after Justin as soon as he hears him retching in the bathroom.
Justin is pale and shaking. He didn’t expect all his memory to come back at once. He did not expect some of them to stab at his heart so violently.
When the dry-heaving stops, he lets Brian strip him off his clothes and put him under the shower. Brian washes Justin’s body with gentle strokes of his hand and Justin holds onto him for his dear life. Brian doesn’t mean to arouse Justin; he’s merely giving him comfort which Justin is willing to soak up.
Brian tucks Justin into his bed, sliding in behind him. He thinks it’s strange Justin lets him get this close but he’s glad. Anguish, despair, hurt had been flaming up in Justin’s eyes when he remembered and Brian hated being the cause and target of it.
He briefly wonders whether he should let Jennifer know but then sleep overcomes him.
Brian wakes up to the feel of Justin’s fingernails scraping over his chest and Justin’s mouth latched onto his neck. Justin straddles him in a way that Brian’s prominent morning wood fits into Justin’s slippery crack just fine. Brian smirks when his sleepy brain registers that Justin is already well-prepared.
When Justin rises up and sinks down painfully slow on Brian’s cock, Brian’s fingers dig into Justin’s hips, bruising him.
It’s a slow fuck, but intense. Brian wonders whether it is maybe the slowest they ever shared and what Justin is trying to communicate. He thinks he tastes goodbye in Justin’s kiss when he rolls off him afterwards.
When Brian gets home that night, he finds Justin’s things neatly packed into boxes in the hallway, a note saying that someone will come by to collect them.