Chronology:

Tuesday, October 11th ... a celebration with friends and family

Sunday, October 16th ... someone wise and knowledgeable puts it all on the table and someone too close to see clearly listens

Wednesday, October 19th ...leap of faith, never mind the real push that will be revealed much later

Tuesday, October 25th (nothing much happened on Tuesday, October 18th, that's if you don't count the "push" that I'll tell you about later)...Hell freezes over and Justin witnesses it on behalf of all mankind

Friday, October 28th ...you get ringside seats to the present tense

Sunday, October 16th, 7:32 pm

Fifteen minutes later, Brian was still in the shower and the soup was still simmering. Justin forced himself to stay put and concentrated intently on all the sounds that were being piped into his head from seemingly several hundred miles away. That James Bond movie "Goldeneye" was on and although he could hear the dialogue now, he wasn't listening to any of it. He wasn't even listening as Brian turned off the shower, opened the door and padded across the bathroom on wet feet. He'd instead been listening to a replay of the sound of his own voice as he and Brian joked and lit up a joint on Debbie's porch. It had been chilly and having left their coats inside the house, they'd made good fun of huddling close together to share hits off Brian's potent little after-dinner treat.

Justin could remember that they'd each been a little buzzed from the wine and in all honesty had started out the evening being stoked enough to take a cab to Deb's instead of the Jeep. Having been made to mostly sober up under Debbie's chastisement and Lindsay's coffee, the two had convinced Vic to look the other way while they went out to the porch to get happy again. Pressed against Brian's body, Justin could remember them kissing and laughing as they passed the joint back and forth and he could remember the exact point in time when the wine and the smoke had told him that this was as right a time as any to open his mouth and say what he'd been dying to say.

Justin could remember that Brian had thought it was a joke at first and he could remember that he'd actually started grinning when Brian first started to smile. For a split second, the look on Brian's face was as if he wasn't going to object to the proposition and for a split second before the laughing, the smile was just enough to suggest that this might go even better than Justin had fantasized. Instead, that smile had turned to something else and then had given way to Brian pulling Justin in close and hooking his arm around Justin's neck before laughingly whispering three little words into his ear.

"You...are...fucked." The man had laughed some more before meeting Justin's eyes again. "No more pot for you."

"But I'm not high." Justin smiled hopefully. "I mean it Brian." Searching his face, Justin held on to Brian's arms as he waited for the man to stop laughing. He'd watched Brian take another hit and he could see it when the realization dawned on Brian's face that two puffs of pot and some wine hadn't produced this question. Standing frozen in the wafting smoke, both had waited for the air to clear and each had waited for the other to catch up with their line of thinking.

"You're fucking serious?" The man was still smiling, but it was less about humor and more about a face frozen in surprise.

"Yeah. We're practically there and it hasn't killed you, so why not?" Justin reached out to close his fingers in the feel of Brian's body warmed sweater.

"I'll tell you exactly why not." Suddenly very serious, Brian had pulled away at that and after one last hit, tossed the smoldering butt over the railing. "We're not dykes."

"Fags get married Brian. Michael and Ben talked about getting married, Emmett and Te..."

"Dinner was good and I'd like to keep it down." Brian cut Justin off and turned to look at him again before turning his back. The man had shook his head then in an attempt to clear away the cobwebs that threatened to jam the gears if Justin was determined to continue this conversation.

"Why not? Seriously I mean, why the hell not?" Justin moved around to find Brian's face again. "We've been together for so long. I love you and you love me and..."

"Why do you want to fuck this up?"

"Why does it have to fuck anything up? It's what I want...with you."

"Well I don't want it with you. I don't want that shit with anyone. I told you going into this again that there still weren't any locks on our..."

"Bullshit. There are locks. We've been together for two years since all that mess back then and there are locks."

"Dykes...and pussy fags," Brian had paused to emphasize the second part of that phrase, "...put on matching outfits and stand up in front of bunch of jackasses and pretend like what they're doing actually means something. Everybody smiles and says it's so beautiful but everyone knows that it's not legal and that the pomp and ceremony, even for the heteros, means nothing. Give it till the handsome groom's not looking at the face of his new life partner or the pruned up official and he's scoping out the crowd of well-wishers for his next fuck or at least his next fantasy...depending on the arrangement."

"That's beautiful Brian, you should write that last part down...quote it to me from time to time." Justin rolled his eyes at his lover and looked away.

"You're always telling me to talk to you and tell you what I think...I do it and you don't want to hear it. Which is it Justin? Talk or not?"

"I want to spend the rest of my life with you and if I make that promise to you, I'll mean every word of it."

"I'm sure you will, but you see that's the fucked up part of it. You'll mean it when you say it and it'll honestly be a fucking surprise to you when you change your mind."

"Brian."

"Just forget it. Now let's go back inside before I freeze my fucking nuts off." Reaching for Justin's chest, Brian closed a hand around a fold in Justin's sweater. He'd made a move to pull the younger man inside with him but Justin brushed his hand away angrily.

"When the hell are you gonna take me seriously? I'm not a kid and I know from cruel reality that ‘happily ever after' isn't real. Today you make me happy, yesterday you made me happy and I wanna do this. This is one of the things that I want to do in my life and because I'm banking on the fact that you're gonna make me happy for tomorrow and hell of a lot more tomorrows, I want to do this with you. You knew I wanted this, I've been asking for this..."

"Twenty-fucking-two, Justin. Live some more, see some more things."

"Thirty-fucking-four, Brian. Have you seen enough and lived enough to be ready yet?"

"No." Brian shook his head again and walked back toward the front door. Turning to look over his shoulder, he pushed a hand through his hair before meeting the other man's eyes again. That word had been meant as an answer to Justin's last question and also as a final statement on the question that Justin had posed through a cloud of smoke and with Brian's arms tight around his waist. Apparently Brian didn't want to "fly to Vermont and get hitched tonight"... Keeping his eyes firmly on an unmoving Justin, Brian dropped his hand and finished it before going inside alone. "Don't ask me about this again."

"Your soup is burning Julia." Brian's voice punched through Justin's mind first and then the smell came second. Their dinner had been on the heat long enough to boil over and Justin jumped up quickly to follow Brian into the kitchen. The man had been getting ready for staying in and the cling of the skin moistened silk pajama bottoms against Brian's legs and thighs led Justin's way to the stove. "You like 007 that much? What's this, a developing spy fetish that I haven't tapped as yet?"

"I have a lot on my mind. I didn't smell it." Justin muttered his words under his breath as he reached for a potholder. He'd moved the pot off the burner as Brian turned around to study his face.

"And what was so riveting?"

"Guess." Justin cut his eyes at Brian and waited until the man stood aside from the sink before retrieving a dishtowel to wipe down the area of the stove around the element.

"Oh that." Brian smiled at Justin's annoyance and watched as Justin got angry all over again.

"Stop playing with me Brian because if it hasn't occurred to you yet, you're pissing me off." It seemed concentrating on how much Brian had been taunting him had gotten the better of Justin because he'd misjudged his movements around the hot element. Brian on the other hand for all his humor had watched it play out in slow motion and was there to grab Justin's hand and pull him to the sink even before the other man had managed to cry out in pain. "Son of a bitch...shit!"

Justin had rubbed a knuckle against the hot element in his haste to clean up and get away from Brian and the older man had spirited him to the sink in an instant. Turning up the cold water, all words subsided as they both watched the water flow over the reddening skin. Brian had held Justin's hand in place long after he'd tried to pull away and it had taken only Brian's satisfaction that the burn wouldn't blister to get him to shut off the pipe.

"Rescuing me or ruling me, that's the only time I get your attention isn't it?" Justin turned to meet Brian's eyes and the man only handed him a dishtowel to dry his hand before moving off to find to some ointment. He'd ignored Justin's rib because he didn't want the night to finish on the same tangent it had started on. It was obvious that Justin was serious about this but the last thing that would make sense would be to start a division in their arrangeme...relationship over what name they would attach to it in the future... ‘Fucking rituals,' Brian thought. ‘Why mess with reality to create a ritual that means nothing in comparison?' No words uttered, Brian returned with the aloe cream that he'd bought for Gus before moving to open the jar. It had taken the annoyed blue eyes in the place of the smaller tearful mirrors of his own, to make him realize that dressing this burn would be different from Daddy coming to Gus's rescue. His son had needed rescuing when he accidentally touched a hot tray from the oven...and in other contexts, so did Justin...but today was not one of those days.

Handing the other man the cream, he stood back and watched Justin open it and pat at his finger. "You love me right?" Justin asked after a minute or two without looking up.

Brian smiled ruefully and looked away.

"I didn't mean that as a question or that I doubted it." Justin added his words quickly, having sensed Brian's reaction. "I just meant..."

"I know what you meant. You're just warming up with another reason why I shouldn't be fighting you on this." Brian turned away and walked toward the living room. He'd been rethinking the seduction scene he had planned, having now decided that under no circumstances did he want to fuck Justin tonight.

"No. I just want... I want you to give me the real reason why not."

Brian thought about himself in another life when he wouldn't have owed Justin a reason and would have told him so in no uncertain terms. Today was different and two years ago he'd decided that Justin was amongst the few that would be entitled to an explanation, an excuse, or an apology. That hadn't meant that he would give them freely and it hadn't meant that he would answer Justin's question now. "I've already done that...ad nauseum...I'm not gonna to do it again."

Taking a deep breath, Justin recited the stated list in the order that it had turned over in his mind at least twenty times a day for the last several days. "You won't do this because I'm too young...because you're too young, because I haven't fucked enough guys yet, because it won't last, because only dykes and pussy fags do it, you won't marry me because it wouldn't be legal where we live, because Brian Kinney doesn't do that bullshit, and because you won't be completely monogamous. Have I missed any?"

"No." Brian turned to glance at Justin across the room before dropping himself on to the sofa and grabbing the remote. He knew that Justin had an answer for every one of his "reasons" and Brian's muscles tensed as Justin did exactly what Brian knew he would do.

"I'm not too young and you're not too young and I have no interest in fucking around any more than I already have." Standing within ten feet of Brian, Justin could smell his shampoo. "You're probably right and it won't last forever." He'd fought hard to admit that part of it and he watched Brian's jaw tense at that last statement before he continued. "As for the thing about only dykes and pussies doing it, I'm no dyke but if wanting you this way makes me a pussy fag, then that's what I am." Another deep breath. "About it being legal, it doesn't matter to me whether I own all your stuff when you die or whether other people think that it's bullshit. As for what Brian Kinney would or would not do, you're already unrecognizable to most people...and, you might not like me saying this Brian but, I know and you know that although you can do whatever and whoever you want, you haven't fucked anybody else but me for a long time."

Brian blinked and blew out a breath before he turned to look in the direction of the wall across the room from him. He could see Justin in his peripheral vision and he turned the volume on the television way down before he spoke up.

"You're not the little woman Justin. What you have is all you're gonna get, so it has to be enough for you."

"What if it isn't?" Justin spoke quietly and watched in slow motion as Brian turned to look at him.

"Then we rewind this story to two years ago and watch the tape again." Brian was blunt and Justin flinched a little at the words.

Silence.

"Neither of us wants to do that. I said...we said we wouldn't do that...no matter what." Justin had whispered this last bit and he looked away slowly and absently rubbed his hands against his thighs. The air in the room had suddenly gone white hot with the charged electricity and he didn't like the feel of the static against the back of his neck. "I'm gonna take a shower, okay?" Asking Brian's permission to shower hadn't been his intention...asking Brian's permission to forget that the last ten minutes had happened seemed closer to the mark. Something threatened to change between them because of the last few minutes and it had taken Justin with as much surprise as Brian's last comment.

Turning and walking toward the bathroom, Justin pulled his t-shirt over his head and let it drop where it slipped from his hand.

"Justin." Brian was standing in the doorway to the bedroom now and the younger man turned slowly to look at him. "I didn't mean..." He'd stopped short at the look on Justin's face. Shell-shocked...afraid...not quite in the same dimension... "That wasn't a threat, I just meant..."

"I didn't mean to paint you into a corner. That was my fault. If this means that much to you then just forget it, okay?" He still wanted to erase the last few minutes and Justin stood where he was and waited for Brian's next words.

When Brian didn't say anything else, Justin turned around and stepped into the shower. Something threatened to change between them again and it would either be for the better or for the worse.

Monday, October 24th, 11:17pm

More than a week had passed since that night, and in that week a lot had happened. They had eaten together, slept together, laughed together and all in all pretended together that no weirdness was felt and that all was fine.

Justin felt the non-weirdness most acutely and in the midst of his discomfort he gave his best performance at being unaffected by being shown the precipice and the void beyond it when Brian had turned down the television on that Sunday passed.

It had been Lindsay who'd most seen the change...the new un-excitedness and the non-desperation to get Brian to take their relationship to this next level. Whereas she could get Justin to blush about what he wanted from Brian, or to be coy about what he thought Brian would say, this new Justin shut down completely when prodded with even the suggestion that he had previously entertained these thoughts.

Even Daphne, who'd transferred out of state for the last year of college, had noticed a difference in Justin in the last few days. Their telephone discussions were less frequent and less lively and something had definitely happened to shed new light on Justin's intentions.

"What happened between you and Brian?" The psychic more than the soon to graduate psychologist in Daphne spoke up in the midst of one of their conversations and Justin almost fell out of his chair when he heard the tone in her voice. This wasn't about the childhood gossip or about knowing the latest in your best friend's love life. This question had been delivered almost professionally and it was for this reason that Justin found it hard to blow it off with the same dismissals that he'd managed with the guys and to some lesser degree Vic, Debbie and Lindsay.

"He said no." Justin had responded after a few minutes.

"You had to have suspected that he might, right?" Daphne wished that she was there to see the expressions on his face. She'd been doing her practicums by counseling at a children's shelter and she'd figured out that much more of a situation played out in the way a person looked when they said something or didn't, than by what they'd actually said.

"It wasn't that he said no. It's that he meant it." Justin took a deep breath after he'd finished and he closed his eyes to rest of the loft. It had been about ten o'clock when the phone rang and he pushed aside some of the papers that were laid out in front of him on his work table to find the portable. Brian wasn't back yet and the rest of the loft in darkness, the sudden noise had taken him a bit by surprise. Along with pretending that all was fine, he'd been ignoring the fact that the phone hadn't rung all evening with Brian calling to say where he was or when he'd been back. For a couple who didn't have locks, they did seem to at least have tethered each other to themselves with these regular check-ins and the careful attention to keeping in touch.

He'd been working in the semi-darkness and pretending not to remember the strange ways that Brian had been looking at him over the last week or the way the man had seemed to walk on egg-shells around him especially in the last few days. To say that Brian had been careful with him would have been an understatement. Brian had all but bent over backwards to concede to Justin's every request, not that Justin's discomfort allowed him to ask for much, but it had been stranger yet because Justin often hadn't been the one to drive those conversations. It had been Brian that suggested that he pick Justin up from school so that they could go to Justin's favorite restaurant for dinner, it had been Brian who called in a repairman to look a minor glitch in Justin's computer that Justin had barely complained about, and it had been Brian who for every day in the last week had called him practically every other hour to see that he was okay and to re-explain that he had to work late and that he'd be back soon.

Thinking about all this, Justin had said the first other thing that came to mind when he realized that he was still on the phone with Daphne. "He's acting as though he slapped me across the face in an argument and that all the flowers in the world can't express how sorry he is. Only everyday he's still trying his hardest to top his last bouquet. I won't him to stop and I wish to God I'd never pushed this in the first place."

"Why don't you talk to him about it?"

"Because I'm too chicken-shit to do it. I don't want to make this any worse than it already is." Justin had reached up to his face to push the tears out of his eyes when he heard the key in the lock behind him. "Look Brian's home, I'll have to call you tomorrow, okay?"

"Yeah okay Justin, but talk to him if this stuff comes up okay, I mean really talk to him." Daphne heard him cut her off before she'd even finished her sentence. Hanging up the phone in her own little apartment, she finished her thought to herself. "If this falls apart again, I won't be able to find enough pieces of you to help put you back together."

Tuesday, October 25th, 7:03am

Brian opened his eyes again, having not really closed them for more than a few minutes at a time over the course of the entire night. He could feel Justin's body curled against his side and he was grateful for the unconsciousness that delivered Justin back to him every night where the other man had stayed away from him emotionally during the day.

He didn't move or try to touch Justin any more than he was touching him already for fear that the bubble would burst and the awkwardness would begin anew. He'd spent the last evening in a lounge on the top floor of his office building just staring out at the city and at nothing and waiting for Justin to go to sleep. He hadn't called him all evening and he hadn't bothered to tell him that he'd landed the account that he'd been working on over the last few days. He hadn't told Justin much about his activities in the last few days and if Justin had noticed this, he hadn't said anything to Brian about it. Instead, they'd kissed hello when he finally got home at night and once on Sunday, they'd fucked. It had been only the second time, they'd had sex since their discussion a full week before and since then he hadn't even felt the slip of Justin's tongue against his own.

Everything seemed normal enough because he'd been getting in so much later and then leaving so early in the morning. Never mind the fact that under truly normal circumstances Justin would have met him in the shower when he got home or that he'd wake Justin with a blowjob, which usually led to more, before he left the bed in the morning...No, never mind a lot of things as long as they pretended that all was well and everything was normal.

Moving his hand over his chest, Brian fingered the ring lightly. He'd brought it to bed last night after he and Justin had finally turned in and he'd even thought he would have given it to him last night. After all, he'd bought the thing the Wednesday before and still couldn't bring himself to give it to Justin even as they continued to melt apart. Something about the way that Justin had looked at him last night had made him stop dead in his tracks and so after the other man had finished working on his project and after Brian had showered, he simply slipped in next to Justin's body under the covers and closed his eyes. He could feel Justin watching him in the darkness and he could feel the hand-warmed platinum in his hand, but Brian hadn't once opened his eyes until Justin turned over and away.

Lying in bed now, at least a half-hour before the alarm would go off, Brian thought back to the evening before. He'd scrolled through the text messages on his cell phone and then listened to the voice-mail while he settled into his booth and waited for his dinner to arrive. Michael and Lindsay had called, plus a couple of others...but no Justin. Lindsay and Michael had called to find out why he wasn't answering at the office and why he hadn't been home yet...Lindsay had even told him to "zip up and go home before she tipped Justin off to the fact that he wasn't really at his desk". All in all...no call from Justin.

Taking a deep swallow from his drink, Brian fished his constant companion over the last few days out of his pocket and opened the black box that had housed it. The low lights of the restaurant struck the ring from all angles and the metal seemed to reflect and magnify the light a thousand fold. Touching a finger to the surface, Brian watched as the diamond inset glittered its own dance of light before he pulled his hand away and closed the lid firmly.

Another sip of his drink and another look at the twinkling skyline. It had to mean something that he couldn't stand to be away from that box and yet he still couldn't give it to Justin.

"Worried she might say no?" A very pretty woman at a table a few feet from Brian's spoke up. He'd chosen this seat because there wasn't anyone else on this side of the lounge when he came in. As the evening wore on he'd gained more company and he honestly hadn't noticed when she'd been seated there. Brian had looked at her without answering and had simply reached out to put the box back into his pocket. "Sorry, I didn't mean to pry or anything...just waiting for a friend, thought maybe you were doing the same."

"Don't worry about it." Brian had waved her off and then dropped his eyes back to his drink and his solitude. He disappeared into his head again long enough for his food to arrive and cool without him taking a bite, and long enough for the woman across the way to figure out that she'd been stood up and to have ordered for herself. Brian had looked at his food when he finally noticed that it was there and only when he saw how far the woman was through her own meal, did he realize what had happened. "Shit." had been his only word and she'd smiled silently at him not wanting to trespass on his solitude again.

Deciding that Justin would probably be in bed by then, Brian pushed the plate aside and reached for his wallet. He'd deposited a fifty on the table, drained his glass and stood up. His companion a few feet away chanced this moment to say what she'd been dying to all evening and Brian stopped when he heard what she said. "You'll never know for a fact if it'll work out, you'll only know when you've missed something big. That you'll feel in your bones."

Meeting her crystal blue eyes, Brian had rolled his lips into his mouth.

He'd gone home then and he'd been determined to make that leap of faith so to speak.

He'd managed to reconcile the fact that something had changed between he and Justin that hadn't been about a ploy on Justin's part or a pout because Brian hadn't said yes.

...but he still hadn't given it to Justin.

Brian couldn't shake the gnawing feeling somewhere deep that Justin had changed his mind...something in his eyes had confirmed that last night and Brian pretended not to see it while all the while tucking the ring and his words in for the night, instead of giving them to Justin like he'd planned.

Swallowing against a dry throat, Brian blinked again and turned the ring over in his hand. The box was gone now and having stared at the beams in the ceiling for the last several hours, he sat up from the bed. He'd felt Justin stir a little and the little puffs of air from Justin's mouth on his shoulder almost made him stay in place. Justin wasn't awake yet and Brian stood up to get a real look at him while he still could. Having watched for as long as the growing light on Justin's face would allow, Brian reached over to drop the ring from his hand on to the pillow next to Justin's head...before literally retreating to the other side of the room and waiting.

Some part of the man knew what Justin would say even before he opened his eyes and found him standing in the doorway to the bathroom...just watching him.

T.B.C.