Justin, Colin, Rhys, and Silas all stood poised on the edge of one of the many fields that lined the outskirts of Kilkenny. Only in this field, no one was growing crops or keeping sheep at pasture. Additional groups of men could be seen coming over with coolers of beer and folding chairs. Justin and all the others sat their own stuff down, marking out their spot on the grass. “Three o’clock; almost time,” Justin commented.

“This is going to be fun!” Everyone looked over at Brian, who surprise of all surprises had been the first to show up. “I love rugby.”

“You love rugby?” Justin cocked a hip. “Do you even know the rules?”

“Uh: brutalize all the other men to the best of your ability? What else is there to know?”

“Yeah, sounds just like your cup of tea,” Colin quipped, causing Justin and Rhys to laugh but Brian to scowl.

“Stop laughing,” he told Justin privately. “He doesn’t know me. He doesn’t get to make those jokes.”

“Oh so only the guys back home can be your friends?” Justin teased. “Come on Brian. You’ve been enough of a recluse already. I had a blast at Beltane—”

“Didn’t we all.”

Justin couldn’t keep from indulging Brian’s lewd reminder with a smile of his own. “Shut up. I wasn’t talking about that part. You had fun there, so why can’t you just let yourself enjoy Ireland while we’re here? It’s actually fun, you know.” He mock-punched Brian’s shoulder, knuckles hitting the patch on the jersey he wore.

“Speak for yourself.”

“And if you don’t stop acting so superior, everyone’s going to think you’re a snob, Lord Kilken—”

“Ah?!”

“Fine then, Kinney,” Justin amended. “All I’m saying is that—”

“—that you want me to make friends. You know people have been saying that to me my whole life. Am I mean, or something?”

Justin nearly laughed, but managed to restrain himself to a simple smile. “Yes. A little. But if making friends isn’t incentive enough to get you to actually socialize, then I’ll tell you this: You could’ve gotten laid a lot more by now if you’d made an effort to do things with me, with these people.” Justin looked over to where the other guys were standing. “Colin knows all the places to go to hook up with guys, and Rhys, well… Rhys definitely wants to fuck you.”

Finally, Brian seemed to be paying attention. His hazel eyes caught on the aforementioned man, watching as he and the rest of the local guys talked sports. “Yeah,” he said, finally letting his guard down. “Yeah I thought so.”

“So let’s go over there and be social. Okay?”

“…Okay.” Brian let himself be led over to the group by Justin, saying hello to the other men who had shown up for the match. In no time at all, he’d been introduced to a Riley, a Tommy, a Brandon, and a Liam, and he was fitting right in. They kicked out their lawn chairs, took their seats, and starting commenting on which of the players for the local rec team were the most talented. Unable to comment on talent, Brian talked with the suitable half of the crowd about which players were the hottest.

“Oy! Shut up you lot! The match is starting.”

Once the players on the field had begun to run around with the ball, dodging and tackling one another, Justin commented, “Soo… it’s like football in soccer clothes?”

The more avid fans nearby were talking about their favorites, loud enough for everyone to hear: “I like number twelve. He’s been the best inside center since they chucked Flannigan.”

“Nope. The second string player’s actually a better inside center than him. His da’s just not the team sponsor, ha!”

“What do you think?” Rhys—seated next to Brian and Justin—was asking. He looked as if he was the only one who found the amusement in Brian and Justin being there in the first place.

“Number twelve is good,” Brian dithered, causing Justin to laugh,

“Oh come on Brian.” He looked pointedly at Rhys. “He doesn’t know a damned thing about sports. Do you see that jersey he’s wearing? That is literally the first piece of sports paraphernalia that I’ve ever seen him touch, let alone wear.” Rhys smiled, and when Brian opened his mouth to argue with this assessment, he was shut down by Justin saying, “And gym clothes don’t count Brian.”

“Yeah?” Brian challenged, embarrassed at being outed as inept in any area, even one so insubstantial as this. He’d never, ever pretended to be into sports before. “Well what about you huh? You’ve never worn any sports stuff either.”

“Michael and David’s fundraiser for the senator,” Justin cut him off blithely. “I was in football stuff.”

Brian snorted at the memory. “Yeah. And what school did you play for? Twink High?”

Rhys ended their arguing by yanking up his chair and planting it firmly between their own seats. He was a handsome man, with warm eyes and a charming smile, so his attentions quickly grabbed Brian and Justin’s attention. “No need to quarrel you two,” he said good naturedly, settling back into his chair now that he had one American to either side of him. “I’ll teach you about the game if you want.”

Brian leaned far back, craning his neck to meet Justin’s gaze behind Rhys’ new position. Each man quirked a brow in interested agreement, before hastily sitting upright again to say in unison to their oh-so-helpful friend, “Sure!”

“Brilliant.” Rhys pointed out at the game that was in full-swing. “So, if you look all the way down to the front of the pitch, the first player there is the loose head prop, and then next to him you’ve got the hooker…”

---

It was halftime. Brian had placed himself advantageously by the water coolers that the rugby players were using during the break, apparently not at all ashamed to flirt before the game had even finished. Justin, however, had remained back with Colin and Silas, the three of them opening another round of beers.

Silas must have caught Justin watching Brian, because when he and Colin finished their brief discussion over the superiority of the team the next township over, he turned on Justin and said, “He’s certainly got his game plan all worked out, doesn’t he?”

Blinking, Justin actually had to take a second to realize that Silas was referring to Brian. “Oh,” he chuckled and sipped his beer. “Yeah. Brian always goes for what he wants. No excuses, no apologies, no regrets.”

“Obviously that principle applies to more than just his fucks. You know we didn’t want to bring this up when he was over here, but I have to say I’m surprised he decided to stay after Maeve’s petition went through. A lot of folks figured he’d just go back to America; give up on this place.”

Justin sat there, feeling uncomfortable at the awkward direction in which this conversation had the potential of going. From the way they both looked at him, it felt like Silas and Colin had both known this discussion was coming. “Um well, he’s got too much invested in the sale, I think,” Justin excused. “The money from the estate would make a huge difference in his life. For the rest of his life actually.” Trying to sound mild, Justin avoided mentioning Brian’s planned exotic trips and exorbitant condo purchases. “I don’t think Maeve and everyone else should be so very angry with him. From what I’ve heard, the castle used to be an unused property. A fake museum that no one ever visited. And he’s agreed to keep the property’s employees on salary.” Justin shrugged at Colin and Silas, “That should be enough I’d think. What does everyone else care if he makes some money by selling the castle?”

“Yeah but that’s not all he’d be selling, is it?” This from Colin.

“Huh?” Justin’s brow creased in confusion. “What do you mean?”

“I mean: he’s selling a lot more than that damned castle. He’s selling the water rights to the bay.”

“Well that’s just so the cruise ships can come in to port. To let the people off.”

Colin scoffed, and for as kind as he’d always been with Justin, he looked ticked off now. “Yeah mate, but have you even thought about what that’ll do to the town, having big-ass ships docked out in the water? And they’ve got all the say as to what goes on there? We’re an old fishing village Justin. A lot of people won’t be able to keep up their business. A lot of people will suffer.”

Justin frowned, “I’m sure it’s not all that serious…”

“And you know what else?” Now Silas was speaking. “Where do you think all those tourists what come off the boat are going to go? You think they’re all going to stay at the ‘Folly?”

“Well… no.” Justin had honestly never thought of that.

“No. That’s right. I’ll tell you where they’ll go. They’ll go straight to the brand new, six hundred room monstrosity of a hotel they’re going to build. Three guesses as to where they’ll build it.”

Justin’s eyes widened. “Not… not the castle?!”

Both Silas and Colin looked grim. “Where else can you get perfect vistas of the sea and the country and the town? Right smack dab where some old lord thought to build his castle a thousand years ago.”

“But, but they’d have to tear it down!” Justin was flabbergasted at the very idea of someone ever wanting to destroy something so historic and beautiful. Sure it was old—a ‘pile of rocks’ as Brian so often quipped—but it was still a treasure in its own right! “They wouldn’t!”

“Oh, no,” Silas agreed. “Tearing a whole castle down is such a bother. They wouldn’t do that. At least: not the whole thing. The front façade’ll probably be kept to give the tourists that ‘castley’ feel, don’t you recon Colin?”

“Ay.”

“But I’m sure they can build all those one, two, and king bedroom suites right up the back of it.”

Silas was smug, and Justin was horrified to be hearing this. Surely, just surely they had to be wrong. Wrong or lying, though he sincerely doubted either of the Irishmen would do that to him. “Does,” he swallowed, “does Brian know about this?”

Colin shrugged. “I figure he must. You should ask him how he sleeps at night. Especially given the rest.”

Justin gulped. “The rest?”

“Well we’ve told you about the castle and the bay,” Silas said. “But then there’s the country land of the estate with the best views—they’ll probably want to develop the hell outta that. And there’s the highway.”

Justin felt his stomach sinking the more he heard. Tearing down the castle? Ruining businesses based on the bay? Major construction in the countryside and a freaking highway traversing it all? He couldn’t believe his ears. He couldn’t believe that Brian even knew about it all.

“It can’t be true,” Justin nearly whispered, bringing his beer back to shocked lips. Brian couldn’t know. Not this. Not these things.

“Well your boyfriend and Colin know more than I do,” Silas said. “But one thing’s for certain. This’ll change the town forever. Kilkenny as we know it will cease to exist.” He looked Justin deep in the eye then, and held up a finger to point meaningfully. “That’s why Maeve and all that lot are so upset. That’s why they’re fighting.”

Colin nodded in agreement, but neither man added to the discussion anymore. Just as they had seemed to sense weeks ago that Justin harbored no greedy capitalist intentions on their little town and thus merited being their friend, so too they now seemed able to recognize that they’d given Justin an overload of heavy information. So while all three men sat back silently to finish their beers and wait for the match to begin again, Justin was left alone to contemplate this devastating news.

It was news that he was still trying to convince himself just couldn’t be true. Justin could still see Brian across the pitch, now talking avidly with the players—one in particular. He did seem to have made some progress in his attentions, as the juggernaut of a player was now leaning in to Brian’s space while they conversed with smiles. Brian might score that night, Justin thought vacantly. The idea caused him little to no distress at that point. His only thought was to how late Brian would be getting in in the evening or early morning, as there were clearly some things that the two of them now needed to discuss. As he sat in his lawn chair and watched the other man with worried eyes, Justin desperately hoped that Brian would hit it and quit it in extra-expedient fashion.

Because he really didn’t think that he’d be able to sleep that night without any answers.

---

It was just past one in the morning when Brian returned to castle Kilkenny. As predicted, Justin hadn’t been able to sleep. So when Brian entered the master bedroom that they’d been sharing for the past three and a half weeks, it was to the sight of Justin, wide awake and seated on the huge ledge of the window.

Brian stepped into the room with a questioning tilt to his head. “Hey. Why are you still up?” he glanced over to the bedside lamp that’d been left on. Its soft glow did little to alleviate the sad tint to Justin’s face. “Justin?” he asked again, stepping closer. “You weren’t waiting up for me were you?”

Finally, Justin spoke. “Yes, but probably not for the reason that you think.”

Shrugging, Brian began to pull his shirt off. “Okay.” Bare-chested, his fingers pulled down the waistband of his shorts. “Then why?” Since he’d bent down to remove his sneakers, he failed to see the bland look Justin gave at his nudity. If he’d seen it, that surely would have been cause for alarm.

“I heard some stuff today.” Justin said lightly. “I couldn’t get it off my mind until I talked to you.”

“We were together all afternoon at the game. Why didn’t you just tell me then?” A bare-assed Brian padded casually into the bathroom, still not attuned to his lover’s disquiet. He was halfway through taking a piss before Justin emerged in the bathroom, and mostly done washing his hands when the other man spoke,

“I didn’t want to spoil the day. Today was the first time I saw you being a part of something here. Really being a part of something on your own. I liked seeing that. It made me happy.” For a while.

“So why do you look like someone killed your puppy?” Brian asked, connecting their gazes through the mirror—the mirror that’d seen their very first fuck in Ireland. “What the heck is wrong?”

“I heard some things…” Justin hedged.

Brian sighed. He stood up straight from the sink and walked over to stand in front of Justin, his body keeping the other man’s form against the bathroom wall. “What ‘things’?” Now he was beginning to clue into the disquiet, because it certainly wasn’t like Justin to beat around the bush like this. “Justin?”

“They said that you were selling the castle, but not just the castle. They said it’s the bay and the businesses and the countryside and the hotel and the highway. The whole town, basically. It won’t be Kilkenny as they know it.” Justin nearly said it all on one breath, his nervousness over confronting Brian coming forth. If he was really honest with himself however, he wasn’t so much worried about this being the truth, as he was worried that Brian had known it all along. He couldn’t have, Justin thought again. Please, please let him say he didn’t know.

In front of him, Brian was still butt naked, but his expression had changed to one of understanding. “Who’s they?” he asked. “Who told you all of this?”

“Does it matter? Brian the reason I stayed up was because I had to know if it was true.”

Brian bit his lip, not at all oblivious to the imploring set of Justin’s blue eyes. “It’s true,” he said finally, watching Justin’s face fall.

“But...” Justin scrambled for a way to explain Brian’s knowledge, for a way to make it not his fault. “Brian you didn’t know about this? They… they told you today right? Like they told me?” At Brian’s lack of movement, lack of any real answer, Justin felt his dread crest. “Please tell me you didn’t know. That you’re not okay with this.”

Brian shrugged, hands planted on the wall to either side of Justin’s head. Something about him had slipped away in the past twenty seconds. Some mechanism of defense clicking into place behind his eyes the moment he’d realized how upset Justin was going to be over this. So Brian had transformed; become cold before he had to tell the truth and say, “I knew. I signed off on it.”

In the end, the slipping-on of his cold, impervious mask had been a good idea, because Justin did more than become upset. He practically wilted. “No,” he breathed, looking as if some great tragedy had been announced. And in a way, it had. “No Brian. That’s not okay. You can’t!”

“It’s my property I can do what I want with it.”

“But it’s not yours to give away!”

For the first time, Brian’s expression took on a hint of anger. “It damn well is. They stole it, I’m taking it back.”

“But you’re going to let them tear it down?! Build some ridiculous hotel?”

“What’s wrong with that? Nobody gave a shit about this craggly old castle until I wanted to make some money off of it.”

“But it’s not just the castle and you know it!” Justin fumed, pointing a finger right in Brian’s face. “You’re selling the water rights to the bay. That’ll shut down businesses!”

“The cruise line will bring more money into this town with tourism than those smelly fishermen ever could. It will make people in Kilkenny rich. Did your little know-it-all friends tell you that?” Brian hissed. He wished so badly that he knew who had told Justin all of this information. Information that no one besides the lawyers even had a right to know. “I’m bringing business into this pathetic hamlet. I’m improving it.”

“You’re completely changing it. Do you really think anybody is going to want to live here once you’ve run a six lane highway through it all?!”

“I don’t understand why anyone would want to live here NOW!”

Justin gasped, his eyes narrowing to dangerous slits. “You are unbelievable.”

“Thank you.”

“You really are the most selfish person I’ve ever met. All you care about is yourself. You want money, and nice things, and a good time, and you really don’t care who you have to step on to get them, do you?”

Brian kept his lips shut tight at Justin’s assessment of him. Brian Kinney wasn’t in the business of going to great lengths to defend his attributes to others. He did as he wanted, and other people could judge him as they wanted. Justin was no different. If the little twat wanted to see things in such a misguided, one sided way, then Brian wouldn’t stop him.

And he didn’t.

Pushing away from where he’d had Justin caged against the bathroom wall, Brian walked over to turn the shower on. He stood there, not doing anything to conceal his nakedness nor his anger as Justin glared in judgment. “Look,” he said. “You think what you want. I know what I’m doing here, or at least trying to do. If you hate it so much then you march yourself down to the courthouse and add your name to Maeve’s petition. I’m getting a shower and then I’m going to bed.” With that he stuck a hand in to test the water once more, before stepping in and closing the glass door.

Justin was left to stand and stare in disbelief at the other man. And once that got old, he turned and headed straight for one of the unused bedrooms, stopping only to grab a pillow along the way. This was so un-fucking-believable.

---

It had had the potential to be a huge fight. In fact, Justin had thought it would be. But sometimes it was funny how things turned out. How they fizzled out, petered out, or just turned from searingly angry to cold and seized up. Days after the rugby match, and that’s where he and Brian were: cold and seized up. Like some muscle that’d uncramped, but wouldn’t relax back to normal yet. They didn’t talk about it, didn’t forgive it, and neither one of them said sorry.

Justin sat alone as he ate his breakfast, having removed himself to the extreme opposite end of the dining table as Brian and his lawyers. Eighteen seats between him and Brian was probably the simplest and most accurate representation of their discord that anyone could have come up with. Justin certainly felt far away from Brian as he listened to Declan and the two attorneys from Royal Caribbean prattle on over the strength of their legal arguments.

“So that isn’t really something we’re worried about at this point,” one of the cruise line lawyers was saying. “The owner of the property clearly has the right to sell. We can prove that the estate was never legally owned by the county government.”

“Well that’s good,” Brian said. “Even the villagers in town have admitted to my face that it was ‘appropriated’ by force.” He sipped his coffee with finality, hazel eyes peeking curiously over the edge of the mug to see Justin watching them. With a bit more force in his words, he spoke, “Declan; what were those figures you quoted me about the expected growth rate in Kilkenny?”

“For the local economy, they’re predicting a 200% increase in new businesses, a 500% increase in hospitality-based business. Profits outside of the cruise line should number in the multi millions. Or did you mean the population?” he asked, referencing yet another paper. “Because the population’s expected to double in less than three years. That’ll be from people moving in, of course, not the birthrate.”

“Sounds like business will be booming,” Brian said pointedly, eyes still on Justin. “Like we’re giving the citizens of Kilkenny a huge opportunity.”

The lawyers chuckled, “Oh yes, this sleepy little town is about to enter the modern world. Mr. Kilkenny, would you like to go over our argument for the sale of the water rights? We need to make sure that no one is going to try and claim that there’s some endangered species of mollusk living out in that bay, before we can move forward on that front.”

“They would do that?”

“Oh, you’d be surprised how often that comes about as subterfuge.”

“Right.”

They all started talking about how they’d have an oceanologist arrive to inspect the waters as a precaution, and about the future need for development on the beaches of the bay, ‘to handle the traffic of bodies coming on and off the cruise ships’. It was right about this time that Justin got fed up.

Dropping his fork down onto his plate, Justin found that he simply couldn’t continue to eat his scrambled eggs any more than he could continue to sit there and listen to the man he loved selling off the pieces of his estate. At the clatter of cutlery, Brian asked from the opposite end of the table, “Not hungry?”

“I’ve lost my appetite. Excuse me.” Justin walked out of the dining room, hastily making his way for the front entranceway of the castle. He was just shrugging on his coat and had grabbed the keys to the Aston Martin, when Brian appeared behind him and grabbed his wrist.

“What do you think you’re doing?”

“What does it look like?”

“You’re not taking my car.” Brian stole the keys back and returned them to their spot on the hall table.

“It’s a forty minute walk into town!”

 “You also don’t have to run away.”

 “I can’t sit there and hear you discuss Kilkenny like it’s some investment.”

“It is an investment, Princess. Didn’t they teach you about economics or industry in that fancy prep school?”

Justin frowned. “It’s also a town Brian. With real people who have real lives. Lives that you’re going to ruin.” He tightened his lips at Brian’s exasperated sigh. “I’m sorry if you disagree.”

“I do disagree. We’ve been having this argument all week,” Brian muttered. “Kilkenny is stuck in the past. It’s stagnant. And if there’s one thing that I know it’s this: if you stay stagnant, you die. Do you really think that what I’m bringing to the town is bad?”

Justin knew Brian wasn’t trying to start a fight, so he responded in the calmest tone that he could when he said, “Not inherently, no. I know that to you—Mr. Executive Ad man, the idea of growth and expansion and 500% increase in the hospitality industry could only be seen as a good thing.”

“You’re damn right it is.”

“But Brian not everyone is like you.” Justin gave a warning look against Brian’s smirk, “And even if you think it’s a fault on their part; not everyone wants the same things as you. You may be bringing in money and business, but a six lane highway isn’t a fair exchange for what you’ll be taking away from them.”

“What? The bucolic experience of herding sheep? Of patching holes in their roofs every time it rains?”

Justin’s heart hurt a little at Brian’s shallow assessment of Kilkenny. “I’m sorry if that’s all you think they have to hold on to in this town. But some things have value that isn’t written on a price tag. The people here can see it. I can see it. Because some people want simple. Some people want familiar. Some people would rather have a meaningful connection rather than the fast-paced alternative.” A frown marred Justin’s features as he added, “And you might like it too, if you let your guard down long enough to give it a chance.”

Brian quirked his brow. “Are you still talking about Kilkenny?”

“What the heck else would I be talking about?” Justin shuffled uncomfortably. “I don’t know why I thought saying any of this mattered.” He grabbed the keys back off the table, moving to leave, but Brian caught him, saying sincerely,

“People can’t be afraid of change. You might not get what you want in one thing, but you also might end up going in new directions you’d never imagined. People shouldn’t hold on to things that don’t work.”

“I’m not—I mean: they’re not.”

 Brian ignored Justin’s blush at the slip, stressing only, “Not all change is bad.”

Now it was Justin’s turn to wonder what Brian was talking about. Was he talking about Kilkenny, or them? That thought had Justin wondering whether he himself had been referencing both as well. He shook his head, as if to rid it of his uncertainty. “I know that. But this one… this one is.”

In the end, Brian did let him take the car, because he didn’t stop him when he left the castle with the keys in hand, and he didn’t stop him when he drove into town to spend time with the very people whose lives that, for better or worse, he was inevitably going to upturn.