Brian woke up late that night, confused as to the time or circumstance until he looked and saw the clock, and remembered. Oh. He blinked tiredly at the bedroom ceiling. Right.

Justin was gone.

He sat up, feeling unusually hot despite the cool air of the room. The apartment was still now, dark from the late hour and devoid of any sound but that of his own subtle movements. Brian swallowed, realized he was thirsty and that he must have cried while he slept. He didn’t remember, but the stale tracks of tears made his face feel stiff. He stood up from the bed to go into the bathroom and wash them off, the bloody towel from earlier dropped into the hamper on the way

A drink probably wasn’t the best thing for him at that point, what with the events of the past twenty four hours and the headache he had brewing. But he poured one anyway. His first sip went down smoothly as he leant against the kitchen’s counter, trying to think how he should feel. Surely something as terrible as losing the only man he’d ever loved merited more than this vague feeling of a hangover? But all he felt was numb, used up, spent. Something told the hedonistic man that he’d be feeling far shittier once he’d regained his energy. Brian placed a wary hand on his forehead, realizing that he really did feel flushed.

“Shit,” he murmured. “Already?” Well, Justin had warned him. Brian Kinney had never been an addict to anything. That was a mistake lesser people made, not he. A faint chuckle left his lips as he lowered himself to sit at the computer desk.  The kid wasn’t even out of town yet, and already the lasting effects of his parting gift were rearing their ugly heads. Brian had never gone through withdrawal before. If he hadn’t had worse things to contemplate, he probably would have been bothered to be scared. He had a humorless thought that the only good thing about Justin not being there, would be that he’d never see Brian going through this.

There was a broken Wii remote laying over by the living room window that he’d not yet cleaned up; the remnants of the older man’s negative reaction when, post-coitus/bitus, Justin had still decided to leave him. Oh, he’d yelled, screamed even. But with Justin trapped there by the sun for a full day, Brian had found that yelling couldn’t last forever, and it achieved nothing besides. The brunette’s jaw tightened as he replayed how he’d let the other man walk right out the door, no fight offered but for the words he’d exhausted long ago.

The plastic baggie that the cops had put all of Justin’s stuff in was sitting on the desk in front of him, right atop the copy of Dallas Buyer’s Club that they’d never watched. Justin had taken everything out of it, except for one item. Brian tried to keep his fingers from trembling as he removed the cowrie shell bracelet. A pang of sadness sliced through him at the thought that Justin hadn’t wanted to keep it. Why should he want to keep some silly memento? Brian’s mind snapped cruelly, He doesn’t love you.

Right. Brian took another sip from his drink. He hadn’t forgotten that. It was why they were apart now, and would be forever. Justin was getting on a plane to L.A. in less than twenty four hours and that would be the end of them. Justin Taylor would go on to his new life, and Brian Kinney would go back to being what he’d always been: alone. The brooding man snorted callously as he swiveled in the desk chair. God, if anyone had asked him what he thought would be the end of him and his stalker, the last guess Brian ever would have offered was that Sunshine would fall out of love with him. Ridiculous.

Except that it wasn’t. It was oh so true. And despite all he’d done, Brian hadn’t been able to stop it. Now he sat alone at his desk, nursing a drink as the first symptoms of withdrawal crept upon him. There was a picture frame sitting next to the desktop computer, one of those new electronic ones that the gadget store at the mall always sold. It’d been a Christmas present from Ted last year, and Brian had filled it with photos of Michael, Justin, Emmett and the rest of the gang. One of the photos that was of Justin cycled by, and before he could stop himself Brian was touching the button that would pause the slideshow. Justin smiled out at him, having been caught unawares by the camera at an early hour that day. His eyes were still bleary with sleep, his hair as tangled as the sheets around his body. God, he looked like heaven.

Brian felt his gut swirl. It was unfair, he thought, how much he wanted that man. His want, his need for Justin extended so far beyond anything he’d ever felt before, and Brian knew that he would forever be left wanting because he would never get enough, never be sated as long as Justin was there, still existing. In Pittsburgh or L.A., it didn’t matter. He’d been infected by Justin long before he’d ever let him sink his fangs in, and somehow Brian knew it was a malady that was never quite going to go away. Not like a scar or tattoo. Those things were on the surface, superficial. They had surgeries for that. What Brian had went deeper, and there was no useful cure for it. Justin was simply… in his veins.

---

Brian held the phone receiver to his ear, glancing over at the wall clock from where he lay. Five-thirty. Justin’s flight would be leaving in a matter of hours.

He scowled, not happy to have caught himself thinking about it again. “Snap out of it, you pathetic idiot,” he groused from his position on the floor. He’d laid himself out on the large pillows in the TV room, and he’d stayed there since lunch that afternoon. His symptoms were getting worse and lying down was the only thing that sounded amenable to him at this point. So, he was conducting his affairs from the living room floor.

“Hello? Brian, is that you?” The voice that came through the phone sounded confused, ostensibly having heard the brash man’s words of self-derision. “Brian?”

“Yes, it’s me,” Brian answered swiftly, hitting the phone’s speaker function and laying it to his side. He couldn’t really take loud noises so close to his face right now. “Cynthia, I need to take some time off. I need you to make sure everything in the office runs smoothly while I’m gone.” Brian didn’t have to listen closely to know that the noises he was hearing over the line were of his devoted assistant grabbing pen and paper.

“Okay Brian. Well the next conference for the Tropica account was scheduled for tomorrow, so I’ll shift that to Wednesday, and the interdepartmental meeting can be set back to Thursday if it has to—”

“No,” Brian interrupted, closing his eyes in fatigue. “No Cynthia, I’m not taking a sick day. I’m taking time off.”

A pause. “Um, right. So push them to Thursday and Friday?” When Brian didn’t answer, the woman gasped, “Jesus Brian, Longer?? How long? You never take off.”

“I thought now would be an excellent time to start,” he quipped dryly. “Two weeks, minimum.”

“Two weeks!”

“Minimum.”

Her scoff crackled over the phone’s speaker. “What on earth kind of fuck fest is there that takes two weeks! Even Australian Mardi Gras wouldn’t—”

“It’s personal,” the dark-haired man muttered, cutting her off. Of course he couldn’t have expected her not to think that’s what this was about. “Just trust me when I say that I need the time. It’s very important. Non-negotiable.” From his horizontal position on the pillows, Brian ran his hands through the sweat-damp strands of his hair. “Tell Ted he’s in charge until I’m back.”

“And what am I supposed to tell him when he freaks out over the stress, huh? What—or who—am I supposed to tell him you’re doing for these two ‘non-negotiable’ weeks?” Cynthia sounded downright stressed herself. “Brian you’re the head of Kinnetic. The entire staff is going to flip. Where am I supposed to tell everyone you’ve gone off to this time? Miami? Ibiza?”

“Tell them…” Brian grimaced a smile at the arched wood of the loft’s ceiling, somehow finding absurd humor in his response of, “Tell them I’ve gone to rehab.”

After the phone call, Brian got up from his pillows only long enough to fetch another cigarette from the coffee table, popping in a DVD while he was at it. The sound of the lighter permeated the apartment as he lit up, the beginning credits to Dallas Buyer’s Club running across the television. Brian saluted the screen as if he was saluting Justin, muttering, “Finally watching your depressing-ass film,” around the end of the cigarette. He’d call the rehab place after the movie, he decided. Maybe they’d even send some nice men in white coats to come cart him away.

He’d need it, because at the rate he was going Brian knew he wouldn’t be able to drive himself safely for long. Justin had told him to call someone if the withdrawal got too bad to handle. Well it hadn’t yet but the staunchly self-sufficient man could tell that it soon would. He’d dive muff before letting Michael and the rest of them see the situation he’d gotten himself into. But since he really didn’t want to lick some woman’s twat either,  Brian figured that rehab was the next least painful option. If Ted ever found out about it though, there’d be sarcastic retribution of a level to which he’d never been subjected. The movie started, and Brian glanced the small collection of bottles, glasses, and ash tray stubs he had going on the floor.

Justin would have said it was evidence of his ‘maladaptive coping patterns’, or something totally bullshit like that. Brian tried not to think about how much he was probably going to miss the bullshit from now on. He’d been twitching like some junkie since two o’clock, so if the urge struck to pour another calming shot of liquid medicine down his throat every once and a while, he’d damn well do it.

The once-again reclined man exhaled a long drag as the movie’s first scene of a dusty rodeo played out in front of him. Resignedly, Brian figured that they must not take too kindly to patients bringing in their own booze and drugs. It was rehab, after all. He sighed, watching as a tragically-skinny Matthew McConaughey cavorted with a couple of women onscreen. Oh well, maybe there’d at least be some hot male nurses or orderlies to fuck around with.

He fell asleep half way through the movie, wiped out from the liquor and the fatigue of his worsening symptoms. The only thing he dreamt about was Justin; dancing with all the pretty boys in L.A.