Brian slid the door to his loft open, uttered “Oh, hell no,” and tried to slide it shut again the second he saw who was standing on the other side. It was to no avail, however. Like her son, Jennifer Taylor was small and very fast.

“Nice to see you too Brian.” The woman had set her purse down, approaching the dining table as if she would sit. “You even made dinner. How thoughtful.”

“Jennifer,” Brian tried to say in his most serious voice. The attempt was somewhat hampered by his half-dressed state. “I know you know that food isn’t for you.”

She was carefully examining the reheated stroganoff as if it had something written on it. “Justin made this.”

“…Yes. For me.” Brian padded up to the bedroom, hurriedly finding a shirt to wear. “What are you doing here?” The woman lived in Arizona for Christ’s sake. This was one catastrophe he hadn’t counted on having to deal with. “I thought we went over this?”

“I told you I was planning a long weekend.” She shrugged, “Well that was months ago. Don’t you think it’s about time I see my son again?”

“No.” Brian shook his head as he approached. “He’s not the same now. I told you that.” Glancing nervously at the door, he hoped that the kid wouldn’t walk in right that moment.

“You also told me he wasn’t living with you anymore.”

“He’s not!”

“Yet he’s here frequently enough to cook you dinner Monday through Friday?” She’d opened the fridge to view an organized assortment of Tupperware. With labels. “Or are you going to try and claim that you made my mother’s jambalaya?”

An irritated snarl marked the provocative man’s lips. “This is really bad timing. You don’t even understand.”

“Explain it to me while I eat.” She’d taken up a plate and served herself a helping of Brian’s dinner already. “It was a long flight.”

Resignedly, Brian slogged over to join the stubborn woman at the table. “We’ve been trying to be together again,” he explained. “But he’s been on my case about ‘accepting him for who he is’. And we hit a few road bumps.”

“You’re not being accepting?” Jennifer set down her fork, ready to be incensed. “Justin didn’t choose this you know.”

“Oh eat your noodles and calm down. I’m doing my best. You don’t know half the weirdness I have to deal with these days.” Brian frowned, glancing anxiously to the door yet again. “You really do have some kind of timing though. I shot my mouth off about him getting reacquainted with people again the other day. He didn’t want to hear it. He felt pressured just at my suggestion that he visit Daphne, or even call you and Molly. He’s going to think I went behind his back if he walks in here and sees you.”

“Oh Brian, I’m sure it’ll be fine. I’m his mother after all. Maybe you’re making this into a bigger deal than it really is.”

The brunette had only a split second to shoot her a withering glare, before the metallic drag of the door could be heard. Brian tried to concentrate on the beef stroganoff as he listened to the sounds of Justin shrugging off his sneakers, still oblivious.

“You would not believe how hard it was to find a RedBox that wasn’t sold out of Dallas Buyer’s Club!” he was announcing from the entrance. “I had to go to three grocery stores before I lucked out.”

“That’s… too bad,” Brian said tensely, still waiting for the second when the shit would hit the fan.

“Yeah I know. It’s like you nominate something for Best Picture and suddenly everyone who couldn’t give a shit about film suddenly has to watch… it.” The blonde’s sentence petered off as he finally saw who was sitting at the dining table.

“Yeah. Just like you,” Brian muttered. Not that he was incredibly enthusiastic about watching a bunch of drug dealers die from AIDs, or whatever the heck the movie was supposed to be about.  Brian forked at his noodles, not very hungry. “Your mother’s here.”

“I can see that.”

Something hollow and plastic rattled, and Brian could tell it was the DVD being abandoned on his desk. “Well aren’t you going to say hello?”

Soft steps sounded, and Justin arrived in the darker man’s peripheral vision. He seemed hesitant to take a seat with them. “Hi mom.”

“Justin,” she whispered. She looked as if she could hardly believe the sight in front of her. “Look at you.”

“Brian, why is she—”

“—Oh Justin.” Brian inwardly cringed as Jennifer lost her composure far too quickly, interrupting her son to gush, “I can’t believe it. You can’t know how happy I am to see you…” Her voice broke as tears leaked out, “St… standing there… alive…” her fork clattered to her plate as she brought both hands up to cover her mouth. “Sweetie!”

She pushed her chair back to stand, but the motion had Justin drawing back a step, his eyes alarmed as if in fear. “Justin?” Jennifer sounded confused at the reaction. “Sweetie what’s wrong? Can’t I… can’t I have a hug? There’s so much I want to talk to you about.” She smiled despite herself, joy at seeing her son alive for the first time since the accident taking over her features. “Your sister is going to be so excited to hear from you—”

“Molly?” Justin sounded downright intimidated. “Molly’s not here is she?”

“No. But Justin oh we’ve both missed you so much. Oh forget this stupid food,” she abandoned her plate hastily, “though honey I have to tell you: you haven’t lost your touch with cooking. Come over here to the couch and tell me about how you’re doing!”

She was all excitement. All glee and joy at seeing her son alive again. But in her relief, she forgot that she wasn’t dealing with the Sunshine version of Justin that she’d known so well. She forgot that she was supposed to be offering him space. She forgot… that he’d forgotten. And when the silent young vampire jerked away from her touch as if she were a stranger, Jennifer could only stare in shocked disbelief. “Justin? Honey what’s wrong?”

“He’s got fucking memory loss, I told you,” Brian reprimanded, standing from his own chair to face them. “I told you not to assume—”

“I just thought… I mean I know you said that he was having trouble but I’m his mother.”

Shocked blue eyes glazed over in confusion, and then understanding as Justin listened to his boyfriend and mother speaking back and forth about him so familiarly. “…I can’t believe this.” Brian glanced over to see Justin, where he’d retreated to the far side of the kitchen counter like some ruffled animal. “You told her… you told her?! And now she’s here in some sort of messed up ambush? I didn’t even know you were talking to her!”

“Justin I can explain.”

“You told me you’d try!”

Brian’s eyes darkened to dead timber, his jaw tightening. “I am trying.”

“But you’ve been talking to her? Telling her everything?” Justin was fuming, his scared silence from a moment earlier channeled into the attack. “Inviting her here?”

“I didn’t.”

The blonde snorted in disgust. “Don’t lie to me! It’s pathetic. Do you think I believe that she flew from Arizona after three months? And after what you spouted off to me yesterday about reconnecting? That’s some coincidence Brian.” Glancing over to his mother, who was looking hurt and baffled at this breakdown, he felt a surge of overwhelming guilt sweep through him. Guilt that he couldn’t manage a single ounce of emotion for even his own mother; that he couldn’t be the person he was supposed to be. He couldn’t face the expectation that weighed down on him. Squeezing his eyes shut to avoid seeing her hurt face, he addressed Brian angrily, “I can’t believe you would go behind my back like this. Who else have you talked to like this?”

“No one,” Brian insisted, realizing belatedly that his answer made him sound that much guiltier. “Justin I didn’t mean for this to happen.”

“I’m sure you didn’t!” Justin had opened his eyes again, but this time the sorrowful, frightened blue had hardened into unforgiving steel. “I thought I could trust you.”

Brian’s lips parted in shock as he watched the kid hurry over to start lacing up his shoes. “You can trust me,” he insisted, rushing past Jennifer’s form to head off the furious vampire by the door. “You can’t just leave!” he protested. “She’s your mother. Sit down and talk to her.”

“I thought you’d respect my needs. And my boundaries. I. can’t. handle. this.”

“You have to eventually,” Brian coaxed, aware that short of physically fighting him, he was going to be hard-pressed to keep Justin in the loft.

“Not tonight I can’t.” Glancing awkwardly over to where his mother still stood fretting, he said lowly, “ I don’t expect you to rise so high as to admit that what you did was wrong, but at least try and explain to her why this is your fuck up, not mine.”

Brian was unable to stop him at the door, and blocking the stairwell didn’t work either because Justin seemed more than willing to wait for the elevator. “Where are you going?” he asked impatiently as the blond pulled down the wooden grate to separate their faces. The plan had been for Justin to spend the night.

“Where do you think? Evan was right about this. We shouldn’t have kept forcing something that isn’t going to work.”

“That’s bullshit. You can’t just give up like that. You haven’t even let me—”

“Goodbye Brian.”

Brian watched angrily as the lift lowered, taking his lover out of view. He couldn’t think of a worse thing for Justin to have said. “Fuck!” he kicked the wall, ignoring the pain to his foot. How could this have gone any worse? Justin was storming away as he stood there, and the exact thing that he’d warned Jennifer would happen, had fucking happened. Stupid. fucking. mother in laws.

When said woman finally ventured out to check on him, Brian was forced to calm her down and assure her that no, of course none of this was her fault. That Justin just needed a little more time. She took his bullshit to heart and retired to whatever hotel she’d decided to book for the next three days, and Brian was left to clean up the mess. Only problem was: he wasn’t so sure he could this time.

Three hours, half a bottle of Johnnie Walker, and some extensive internet searching later, Brian had come up with the best, most mediocre plan that he could in his befuddled state. He stumbled into bed sometime around one, his laptop left open to the Yelp review webpage for a certain Pittsburgh establishment, called Thrall.

---

Yellow.

Pink.

Blue.

Brian.

Justin’s fingers were stained those colors, his mind stained with the name. He sat before his easel in the studio as the sky faded from blue, to grey, to black. The pastel crayons within his hands transmuted the stain in his mind to the one on the paper, erasing the name, pigment by pigment. Days later, and the same thoughts still flitted through his mind. Angry ones and sorrowful too. How could Brian have betrayed him like that? How could his mother ever understand the lack of love in her own son’s eyes? How could he ever reconcile with either of them now? Justin forced the tears away when they wanted to come. He would not cry. He wouldn’t allow himself the pleasure of self-pity.

In the kitchen, Evan watched restlessly, clearly attuned to his friend’s disquiet. “I don’t get why you’re still working so furiously away on that thing if it’s over between the two of you.”

“I have to finish it. I have to get it out of my mind,” the blonde vehemently insisted. He’d never abandoned a project before, and he wasn’t about to start then. “Once I finish it I can just move on.” He filled in a little more detail.

Evan paced, having thought the two of them could go out for once now that the other man’s devoted human had finally been removed from the picture. But his roommate still seemed to be hanging on… Evan shot an annoyed glance to where Justin sat hunched over his artwork. “Finish it later then. I want to take you out, show you the clubs we’ve been meaning to go to. Now we can actually have some fun, be ourselves! Now that he finally left.”

“I left him.”

“All the better!” The darker vampire leant forward across the minimal kitchen counter. “I told you it couldn’t work. He was fooling himself. Just look at what he ended up doing.”

“You were right,” Justin muttered, knowing that it was what Evan wanted to hear. He just wished the other vampire wouldn’t act so damned triumphant about it. Evan didn’t know a damned thing about he and Brian, going around acting as if their break up was a measure of relief. Justin certainly didn’t feel relieved. He felt like he was mourning something. For someone to whom he’d lost all emotional connection, the loss of the older man certainly was turning out to be hard. “We were just fooling ourselves,” Justin recited dully.

“It happens to everybody.”

“Besides, I wasn’t regaining any of my feelings back for him. There comes a point when you have to admit that something isn’t working, and move on.”

“Exactly.”

“Which is why I’ve decided to accept the offer.”

“Huh?” Evan paused in his cheerleading, confused. “What offer?”

“Brett’s offer.” Pale blue eyes left the canvas to meet stark brown ones. “I got the job, Evan. LucasFilms asked if they should arrange for my plane ticket, and I said yes.”

For a moment it seemed that Evan didn’t know quite what to say, but the moment passed, and he began spouting of about how California was a land of shallow degenerates who would chew him up and spit him out. Justin had heard it all before, so he simply sat there and waited until the worst had passed. “Look, I really don’t want to fight about this.”

“You can’t go!” Evan was nearly exploding, “What the hell am I supposed to do?!”

Justin shrugged. “Go on as usual. You can get another roommate or—”

“Oh that’s rich,” Evan guffawed. “Who in their right mind is going to want to room with me?” When Justin had no good answer, the wiry man elaborated, “No one, that’s who. Jesus Justin if you leave, I might as well go back to the home.”

Justin set his oils down, fixing his roommate with a stern look. “You don’t have to do that. You’ve come so far to go back there. We both have.”

“Then don’t leave me!” Evan implored. “After all I’ve showed you, and helped you with? How can you just leave?”

A swirl of guilt settled into Justin’s stomach, planted by his own thoughts and cemented by Evan’s stare. He felt guilt that he could leave Evan after all they’d shared, but he also felt guilt that some part of him wanted to leave Evan behind. Aiden had always warned him that the wiry vampire liked to attach himself to people. Maybe that was just something that Justin had refused to see…

“Please,” Evan was saying, not having given up his implorations for the night. The older vampire was desperate, but he could tell that Justin was on the verge of making a rash decision. Knowing that he’d have to play his cards absolutely perfectly if he wanted to keep Justin, Evan tried a gentler approach. “Let’s go out,” he compromised. “Like we always said we would. Justin if you want to go to L.A. and see the stuff they’ve got out there, then fine. I can’t stop you. But you’re going to need a starter course, trust me. So forget about the painting for now, get dressed, and let me show you what our world really can be all about.”

The change in the other man’s demeanor had Justin considering his words. The offer was tempting, that much was for sure. Ever since they’d acclimated to their new apartment, Evan had been trying to coax Justin to some of the more vampire-oriented locales within the city. He’d mainly shied away until then because of Brian. Justin had wanted to avoid falling too deep into the separated world in which some vampires—the vampires that Evan always talked about, always idolized—existed.

There was one club in particular, he knew, that his roommate talked about. It was the Babylon for the undead, or something akin to that, and it was where Evan next proposed they go. Justin gave it some consideration, and if nothing more than for the disastrous upset he’d caused by announcing his intentions regarding L.A., the young artist soon found himself agreeing to an evening out on the town, vampire style.

They were going to Thrall.

Evan was just glad he was able to talk the other vampire into it. He knew he’d have to get Justin in deeper, hook him somehow, or else he’d lose him for good. Time was running out.