Chapter 34

After everyone had left, things had started to normalise even more in the Kinney-Taylor household. While Vicky had been down for a nap in her nursery, Brian and Justin had unpacked all her things from the hospital, before starting with cleaning up their house.

In the evening, after both brothers had gotten to feed and spend some time with their baby sister, everyone had agreed to order some take-out and have a quiet evening in the media room.

Once Gus and Luke had gone to bed, Brian and Justin had retired to the master bedroom and had celebrated some more in private. Brian had given Justin one of the best blowjobs he could remember ever having gotten and to pay him back, Justin had rimmed Brian until there had been no tomorrow.

After a quick shower, both men had ended up in their bed, cuddled together, Justin resting his head on Brian's shoulder, absently running his fingers over Brian's scar on his chest, something that he had been doing quite a bit in recent weeks, much to Brian's amusement.

“What are you thinking about?” Justin asked after a while, noting Brian's creased forehead.

“Hmmm? Nothing.”

“Nothing will give you wrinkles if you continue like that,” Justin chuckled, nodding towards Brian's forehead.

“Just thinking...”

“What about?”

“You don't want to know,” Brian replied after about a minute of silence, then sighed.

“Brian?”

“It's nothing. I am okay.”

“Yeah and my name is Rumpelstiltskin,” Justin said seriously, leaning up on his elbow and looking down at Brian's face with a question in his eyes.

“Hi Rumpelstiltskin, what have you done to my Sunshine?” Brian smirked, trying to play it off as a joke, but not convincing Justin for a second.

“Brian, what is it?”

Brian sighed, then turned his gaze to meet Justin's. “I was talking to Ben and Hunter earlier and while talking to them, I realised that we haven't heard from Michael since that day at the chemotherapy centre.”

“And?” Justin frowned, not quite sure why that was a problem. As far as he was concerned that was very good news.

“It's just not like Michael.”

“We have restraining orders against him. He's probably just following them,” Justin mused, not quite meeting Brian's gaze.

“Michael? Do you really think a piece of paper would keep him away? Especially after he had seen me having chemotherapy?”

“Are you sad that he didn't harrass us?” Justin asked, a frown on his beautiful face.

“What? No! I am just trying to understand.”

Justin shrugged. “Who knows what goes on in his mind?”

“You're not bothered by this?” Brian asked, meeting Justin's gaze once more.

“No, why? He's not a part of our lives anymore and hasn't been in years. We have restraining orders and he would do well to follow them which he seems to be. As far as I am concerned all is good!”

“What are you hiding, Sunshine?” Brian asked, looking at Justin more closely, noticing how the blond didn't quite meet his gaze.

“Hiding? I am not hiding anything, Brian. I just refuse to think about him more than necessary,” Justin lay down on his back and looked at the ceiling.

“I know when you're lying and you're lying. What did you do?” Brian asked, now leaning over to look into Justin's eyes.

“Nothing. Why would you think I would do something?”

“Because he wouldn't just stay away. You heard him spew that bullshit about us being friends. He wouldn't just stay away when in his head he thought we were still friends.”

“Well, you're not. Maybe he finally realised it. Good for him,” Justin shrugged.

“Justin, the truth!” Brian said, this time more forcefully and the use of his first name told Justin that Brian was not kidding.

He turned to look at Brian and met his gaze. “What do you want me to say?”

“What did you do? You did something, didn't you?”

Justin shrugged, but when Brian just held his gaze, his eyes looking at him seriously, demanding an explanation, he just sighed. “I made him an offer that was too appealing to refuse.”

“You paid him to leave us alone?” Brian raised an eyebrow as he stared at Justin.

“Not really,” Justin hedged around, obviously not willing to fully explain what he had done.

“Then what did you do?”

“Does it matter? He has left us alone and that's all that matters, right?” Justin looked at Brian, hoping against hope that that would be enough for the older man, but obviously it wasn't.

“Why has he left us alone?”

“Because he moved to LA,” Justin said quietly, after he couldn't meet Brian's inquiring gaze any longer.

“LA? What the hell is he doing in LA?”

“Trying to get the Rage movie made,” Justin said quietly, not looking at Brian any longer.

“The Rage movie? What? I don't understand...”

“He has found himself the lucky owner of all rights to the Rage comic and has been informed that there was legitimate interest in getting the movie made after all.”

“But...,” Brian frowned, looking at Justin in confusion. “The artwork was yours. Not his. He doesn't have the rights to that.”

“He does now.”

“You sold your rights to him? How would he pay for them?”

“I gave them to him... Not that he knows that it was me,” Justin finally offered, slowly sitting up, resting his back against the headboard of the bed.

“Why would you do that? And... what do you mean he doesn't know it was you?” Brian seemed confused and followed Justin's example and sat up as well. He turned to look at the younger man, clearly needing more of an explanation.

“I did what I had to do to keep my family safe,” was all Justin said, his jaw set.

“I still don't understand,” Brian said quietly, urging Justin to go on.

Justin sighed, then took Brian's hand and squeezed it.

“When we saw him that day, I knew he wouldn't leave us alone. Restraining orders or not, he wouldn't. He would have waited for us outside in the parking lot or would have followed us home or whatever. I just knew he wouldn't have left us alone and while part of me didn't care if he would have only ended up in prison again for violating the restraining orders, I knew that it would hurt you and Debbie.”

When Brian was about to protest, Justin just eyed him and in the end Brian didn't say anything, knowing that Justin was probably right.

“So I tried to find a way to keep him away from us and our family and all I could think of was Rage,” Justin took a deep breath before he continued. “To be honest, while it was fun to create the comic, it was always more his baby than mine. It was always his version of how he saw you, but not how you really were. It was his need to project his superhero fantasies onto you and make you into his own personal superhero. At first, I thought it was what I wanted as well and how I saw you as well. I mean... we started with the prom and our story and you had saved me and it was hard not to see you as my own hero as well, but... over the years, you stopped being Brian the superhero and just became Brian the human. My partner, my rock, the father of my children and the more and more I thought about it over the years, I realised that Rage was how he saw you, not how I saw you. And... to be fair, while I was in New York, I had no interest in continuing the comic. First of all because of... well, how things between us had ended and me absolutely not seeing you as a hero during those days, then there was no interest from my side to work with Michael in any shape or form even though I had no idea what had been going on here in Pittsburgh and last but not least because... it just didn't feel like me any longer. I create art, sketches, paintings. But the comic – that was something I had moved on from. My art had evolved from that. So... when it came to it, I realised that Rage didn't really mean all that much to me anymore, despite a few fond memories, but mostly painful ones,” Justin ended quietly.

Not that Brian could blame him. Rage had been the story of his prom, the Rage party that Brian had organised had been the night when Justin had left him for good for the fiddler, the Rage marriage issue had led to their second break-up. Not that it had been the cause, but it certainly hadn't helped them at the time. Brian could definitely see what Justin meant when he talked about Rage mostly having been painful memories. And he himself knew best that he was anything but a superhero. Michael had always put him on a pedestal that he had never wanted to be on and had never deserved to be on and no one knew that better than Justin, the man who had seen him at his best and his worst. Who had been through so much because of Brian's actions in the past. Definitely not the actions of a superhero, that much was for sure.

Brian nodded, never letting go of the hand in his, holding on tightly.

Justin eyed their joined hands for the longest time, then continued.

“I had one of my agency's lawyers reach out to Michael and offer him the rights to the artwork for free, informing him that there was talk about once more turning it into a movie.”

“And he accepted them? From you?”

“He didn't know they came from me,” Justin replied quietly.

“How could he not?” Brian wondered.

“The lawyer reached out to him on behalf of Mr Aiden Cole, a Rage fan from New York who had bought the rights from me years ago and felt that they should be given to the rightful owner of the Rage franchise, so that Rage could continue to live on in the way he deserved,” Justin replied with a small smile on his face.

“Aiden Cole?” Brian asked, eyeing Justin, before something in his mind clicked and a smile broke out on his face. “Aiden... Cole... Ha, that's genius. And he fell for it? He didn't realise it was you?”

Justin shrugged. “Apparently not. He took the offered rights and less than a week later he had left Pittsburgh to go to LA to make his dream into a movie.”

“But... was there any real interest to make it into a movie?”

“Not really. There have always been people muttering about how cool it would be, but as far as I know, never anything serious. And I doubt anyone would want to get involved once they find out that one of the co-creators helped kidnap the child of the other co-creator. Apparently that hasn't stopped Michael though from following his dream in LA.”

“Ha, you're a genius, Sunshine. That's amazing!” Brian enthused, now genuinely laughing as he looked at Justin.

“You're not angry?” Justin wondered, looking at Brian from concerned eyes.

“Well, I guess it would have been nice to know what you were planning, but no, I am not angry.”

“There was just so much going on. You were so sick. Vicky was so sick. I... I just didn't want him to become a problem on top of everything else.”

“So you took care of it,” Brian said quietly, giving Justin's hand a squeeze.

“Yeah,” Justin agreed, looking at Brian. “I did what I thought was best.”

“Thank you, Sunshine,” Brian said sincerely, leaning in for a slow, sensual kiss. “I... I don't know what to say.”

“You don't have to say anything.”

“There was already so much going on and on top of everything else, you went and took care of Michael as well. I... I am speechless.”

“It was time that JT protected Rage for a change,” Justin smiled, claiming Brian's lips in another kiss.

“Yeah, I guess it was,” Brian agreed. “Especially since Rage has retired his superhero pants a long time ago.”

“They were sexy pants, though,” Justin pointed out with a smirk which made Brian laugh.

“Of course. Rage would never wear anything not sexy.”

They kissed for a while, slowly sinking back down on the mattress, hands gently roaming over each other's bodies.

“It's quite funny, you know, how he was never able to come up with a decent storyline on his own and how everything in that comic was based on our own lives,” Justin said after a while.

“The wedding issue wasn't,” Brian pointed out, but the moment he had said it, he regretted having mentioned it. He knew that that issue was one of the painful memories Justin had talked about. He knew how much Justin had wanted to get married and how much he had been against that idea at the time and how much tension it had caused between them.

“Nah, that was just based on my fantasy,” Justin said quietly. “It still wasn't something he came up with.”

“Well, it would have almost come true,” Brian mused, thinking back to the days before everything had gone so wrong and they had been planning their wedding, something no one that knew him would have ever expected to happen.

“I guess,” Justin agreed, running his hand over Brian's head with a sad smile on his face.

Brian eyed him for the longest time, then asked the question he had wondered about for a long time, especially years ago, but had never dared to ask Justin for fear of what the answer would be.

“Do you ever regret that we didn't go through with it?”

To his surprise, Justin immediately shook his head. “No,” he said, his voice sounding absolutely sure.

Noticing the slightly hurt expression on Brian's face, Justin carressed his cheek and asked gently. “You do?”

Brian was quiet for the longest time, then sighed. This was it. He had promised Justin years ago that there would be no more lies between them. When they had given their relationship another try, they had promised each other to always be honest with each other. Brian knew that even though he would like to, he couldn't lie to Justin. Not now, not ever. Justin deserved much better from him.

“All the time,” Brian admitted, then turned away from Justin to lie on his back and stare at the ceiling.

Justin saw the emotions on Brian's face, saw how much his answer had hurt the older man and cursed himself for it. He honestly hadn't known that Brian felt this way. Marriage had never been something Brian had been interested in. He had always made fun of it, for as long as Justin could remember and then, after the bombing of Babylon, when Brian had proposed, Justin had been sure it had been out of shock and fear of losing him for good. Then Brian had bought Britin and had proposed again and Justin had given in, believing that they would be able to make it work somehow. And then New York had happened. And he had left. And Brian had been pregnant and never told him. And things had gone so awfully wrong for five years, resulting in so much pain and hurt on both sides. And now, here Brian was telling him that he regretted that they didn't get married back then. Would it have changed things? Did Brian think none of what had happened would have happened if they had been married?

“Because things would have been different then? With Luke?” Justin asked after a while, knowing that now that Brian's feelings were out in the open, they needed to deal with what had been admitted. They needed to work through this, before it festered between them and turned into something bigger.

When Brian just nodded, a lone tear running down his cheeks, Justin gently wiped it away. “To be honest, I don't think we would even have Luke, had we gotten married then,” Justin said seriously, looking into the pained hazel eyes of his partner. “I doubt it would have made a difference.”

Brian's head shot around and met Justin with an angry glare. “WHAT?”

Justin sighed, knowing that he had probably said the wrong thing, yet he was sure that he was right. He just hoped that he could find the right words to explain it to Brian without hurting him. He had always known how guilty Brian felt for what had happened, how Brian had blamed himself and was still blaming himself at times for what had happened and while Justin knew that Brian was the one to blame, that Brian had been the one to make the decision to keep Luke a secret from him, he also knew that he didn't want Brian beating himself up about it for the rest of his days. Most people would probably never understand how he had been able to forgive Brian, but deep down, he knew that Brian had loved him even then and in his own weird way had just tried to do the right thing. It hadn't been, they both knew it and Justin and Luke had gotten hurt by Brian's decisions, but Justin had made a decision years ago that he loved Brian and loved him more than he had wanted to hate him for what he had done. He had tried to hate Brian, he had wanted to hate him and despise him for what he had done, but no matter how much he had tried, he just hadn't been able to because he loved him. More than anything. And in some weird way, Justin had always understood Brian's reasoning. Maybe it was true and they had a connection, maybe it was true and they were made for each other and Justin was the only one that would ever be able to understand Brian's weird moods and actions, but at the end of the day, he knew that they had been fated to be together and that they belonged together and the last couple of years had proven that to him. They had been happy. All his dreams of a family with Brian had come true and his life had turned out better than he had dared to dream. He just hoped that his next words wouldn't mess this up and that just like he would sometimes be the only person to understand Brian, Brian would hopefully understand him and his reasoning now as well.

He took a deep breath, before he started speaking. “If I hadn't gone to New York, we wouldn't have had sex like that all over the loft and the condom wouldn't have broken and you might have never gotten pregnant. If we had gone through with the wedding as planned... we would have been on our honeymoon and you would have probably fucked me over and over, but do we really know if Luke would still have been conceived? Do we really know if you would still have gotten pregnant if we hadn't had sex on that day in the loft? I am not saying I believe in fate, but... some things are meant to be and maybe... that was just meant to be.”

Justin saw that Brian was watching him and he saw the doubt in the older man's eyes. “Maybe we still would have had Luke, but... maybe we wouldn't and... I don't want to imagine a world where he doesn't exist. I don't want to imagine a world where he and Vicky are not our children, Brian.”

Brian nodded, seemingly following Justin's line of thinking.

“I think,” Justin continued, holding Brian's gaze, “It would have ended with broken hearts even if we had gotten married back then....” Justin sighed, wrapping his hand around Brian's, squeezing it. “We weren't ready back then. It was a nice idea and I think I was more in love with the idea of getting married than anything back then. And when you proposed, I was happier than I ever thought I could be, but now... looking back... I don't think it would have worked. I think it was doomed to fail. We weren't ready, Brian. You weren't ready for a commitment like that and I wasn't ready. I... I was in love with the idea of us, the idea of being married to you, but... I wasn't ready for everything that came with it. I am not saying that your ideas of doom and gloom for my future by your side would have been right, but... I think getting married then wouldn't have worked for many reasons. We would have imploded sooner or later.”

“I think we managed to implode quite spectacularly even without being married,” Brian said seriously, knowing that it had been his fault and his fault alone.

“Yeah, but we found our way back. And that's all that matters,” Justin whispered, leaning in to kiss Brian's lips gently. “We found our way back and are a family now.”

Brian nodded, knowing that Justin was right. The past was in the past and there was nothing they could do about it, nothing about it could be changed. What mattered were the present and the future. And those looked pretty good to him. With Justin and his children by his side.

“Have you ever thought about getting married now?” Brian asked after a while, running his fingers through Justin's blond hair.

“Why, are you proposing?” Justin asked, a smile in his voice, but then stopped when he noticed how Brian's body had stiffened beneath his own. “Brian?”

Justin pulled back slightly and looked into the hazel eyes of his partner and what he saw there, made him startle. “Brian? Shit, you are?”

“I am just asking a question,” Brian answered stiffly, but Justin knew that Brian was only trying to deflect, thinking that Justin's reaction had been a clear no.

“No, I haven't,” Justin admitted, his eyes never leaving Brian's. “Not because I would be opposed if you would ask, but just because it didn't matter. We are a family. We are connected in every way possible. After everything we've been through... in recent months and before... I don't think that there's any doubt that you're it for me. And I am pretty sure that I am the one for you as well. I... I just never felt like we need a piece of paper to prove it.”

Brian chuckled, then hid his face behind his hands. “God... How ironic how times change, isn't it?”

For a second Justin was confused, but then he realised what Brian was talking about. And the more he thought about it, the more he had to agree with Brian. It was quite ironic. For years Brian had been the one to make fun of marriage and Justin had been the one that had dreamed of getting married and having a family and now that Justin didn't really care all that much anymore because he knew that they would stay together until their last days on this planet, it seemed that Brian really cared. At least that was the impression that Justin was getting here.

“You want to get married?” Justin asked quietly, his voice holding a deep breath, afraid to let it go.

After the longest time, Brian finally nodded. At first it had been hardly there, but then it had gotten stronger and Justin had clearly seen it for what it was. Brian wanted to get married.

The whole irony suddenly crashed down on Justin and he couldn't help but laugh loudly. “Irony indeed.”

After several seconds of silence Brian joined in the laughter, pulling Justin close, holding the younger man in his arms as they both laughed about the irony of the situation.

They laughed for what felt like hours, before they calmed down.

Justin pulled away from Brian's embrace and knelt down at his side. He took his hand in his own, holding it tight.

“Let's do it,” he said, a sunshine smile on his face as he looked down at the man in bed with him.

“What?” Brian frowned, not quite sure what was happening.

“Let's get married!” Justin said, his smile widening even more.

“Justin,” Brian sighed, sitting up. “You don't want to. It's okay.”

“I have never said that I don't want to. I said I wouldn't be opposed if you asked. I said I haven't thought about it, because I didn't think it mattered. Now I have thought about it and let's do it!”

“Just like that?” Brian asked with a raised eyebrow, a smile slowly spreading on his own face when he realised that Justin meant it.

“Just like that,” Justin agreed. When Brian still didn't move, Justin urged him to move. “Go and ask me.”

Brian grinned, looking at Justin from shining eyes. He held Justin's hand in his own and squeezed it. “Will you marry me?”

“Yes,” Justin exclaimed, his whole face shining with happiness, before he lunged at Brian, drowning his face in kisses.

After his yes, no more words were spoken that night, but it was a long time before either man fell asleep and when they did, both felt happy and sated.