1 | 2 | 3 | 4

Desires

Xie

This is the first chapter of Desires, the third story in the series that began with Plans and continued with Decisions.

The greatest beta evah is gmta_nz. You might say she's the alpha beta. If you were into saying cute shit like that. Which I'm so not. This chapter was additionally beta'd by vlredreign, who brought her big basket of commas and wore a sexy French maid's uniform while she proofed it. OMG. And intensefemme is Justin's acupuncturist. Lucky bitch.

With thanks also to orlith for providing important research findings on pool sex. He is the Jacques Cousteau of underwater fucking.


This story is dedicated to vamphile - she knows why.

Chapter 3

“Can one desire too much of a good thing?” –William Shakespeare, As You Like It

Brian’s POV

There were certain things I had to get straight with Justin, such as that I was willing to bend the morning blowjob agreement while he was trying to meet a deadline, but his not being there at all in the morning had to stop.

I went downstairs and put the coffee on, and then checked his studio. He was curled up on the sofa I’d had put in there after he started falling asleep at his worktable. I sat down next to him, nudging his legs with mine. He mumbled and turned over, putting his arm over his face. I pulled it away and squeezed his hand.

His lips twitched and his nose wrinkled, and then he opened his eyes.

“Do you want coffee or to go upstairs to bed?”

Justin licked his lips and blinked. I waited for his brain to wake up enough to answer my question.

“Bed.”

I nodded and stood up, holding my hand out. He took it and I pulled him up, and he surprised me by leaning into me and closing his eyes. I stood with my arms around him for a minute. Then I noticed what was on the table.

“Justin?”

“Mmmmmm?” He didn’t even lift his head.

“Why are you drawing Ice Tina? Didn’t Rage vanquish her already?”

“She came back to life. Michael told you this story, I was sitting right there.” I dimly remembered a conversation about the plot of Rage at the diner.

“So I have to defeat Ice Tina all over again?”

“Not just Ice Tina, all Rage’s enemies came back to life in this. You really should pay attention when Michael tells you things.” Then he yawned again.

I thumped him on the back and pushed him out the door. He dragged himself upstairs while I went into the kitchen and had some coffee. He was sound asleep when I went upstairs. I stood and watched him for a minute, and then showered and got dressed. On the way to work I called Michael and made plans to meet him for lunch. And this time I was going to pay attention.

Michael was more than happy to spill the top-secret plot details of the next issue of Rage, after looking furtively around the diner to make sure we weren’t being watched. Although, to be fair to Michael, there probably wasn’t anywhere on earth with a higher percentage of Rage fans than the Liberty Diner.

“Okay, that sucks. How is Rage supposed to do that?” These two needed constant supervision.

“Well, he has Zephyr and JT…”

“Zephyr and JT are sidekicks.”

Michael frowned at me. “They’ve been developing their own powers.”

I rolled my eyes. “So, who came up with this brilliant and unfair plotline? My best friend or my boyfriend?”

He laughed. “It was a joint effort.”

I reached over and stole a few fries off Michael’s plate. “Isn’t there some kind of Sidekicks’ Code of Ethics?”

It was Michael’s turn to roll his eyes.

Justin’s POV

I woke up with a face full of sunlight. Which, since the bedroom windows faced west, meant I’d literally slept until the sun was going down. I began to see the problem with staying up all night drawing: it ate into your productive work hours the next day.

I dragged myself downstairs, thinking wistfully about coffee. There was a fresh pot. I have never loved Brian more than at that moment. Which gave me another idea.

I found him in the workout room, but he was listening to his iPod and didn’t hear me come in. Brian kept it dim and quiet, not bright and noisy like the gym. He was sitting on the weight bench doing bicep curls, his shirt soaked with sweat and his arm muscles straining. Which woke me up better than all the caffeine in all the coffee in all the Starbucks in Pennsylvania.

I walked closer to him. “Hey.”

Brian turned his head, and pulled the earbuds out of his ears. “Hey.”

“Thanks for the coffee.” I set the mug down and straddled the weight bench, facing him, our knees touching.

He grinned at me. “I had an ulterior motive.”

I put my hand out and traced one of his biceps with my finger. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to draw him or lick the sweat off his arm. “Yeah?”

He leaned a little closer to me, but not touching. “I thought that since you slept all day…you might want to come out dancing with me tonight.”

I flattened my palm against his upper arm and curved my fingers around his muscle. I could feel him breathing on my face. I licked my lips. “Okay.”

He leaned into me a little more, and I lifted my other hand and put it on the back of his neck. His hair was wet. I let my lips brush against his, just a little. I ran my hands up and down his arms, resting my face in the sweaty curve of his neck, licking it. His skin tasted like salt.

He still wasn’t touching me, but his breathing was shallow. He was sitting on the weight bench, his legs spread, the dumbbell still in his hand, his arm lying across his thigh. I ran my hands over his shoulders and down his back, slipping them up inside his tank top, pushing the iPod wires out of my way. I kissed his throat and trailed my mouth down his chest, and felt the hard muscles under my lips and cheek. I started sucking on one of his nipples through the wet fabric. I rolled it between my teeth, and then sucked on it again, feeling it get hard in my mouth. I had my palms flat against his back, and they slipped a little on his wet skin.

Brian let the dumbbell crash to the floor and brought both his hands up and gripped the back of my waist, pulling me in tight. His knees hit my inner thighs, so I let my legs slide up over his. His hands scooped under my ass from behind, and pulled our groins together. I wrapped my legs around his waist, feeling my spine curving and the hard ridge of his cock pressing against my balls and the crack of my ass. I had my arms around his neck, holding myself as close to him as I could.

He was pressed against me, and I could feel the damp heat of his sweaty clothes and skin, and I let my body soften and flow against his. His lips touched my throat and I tipped my head back, feeling my hair brush against the skin of my neck. I shivered a little, and then his hands slipped under the waistband of my sweat pants, sliding down over my ass cheeks, his fingers gripping them and pulling them apart.

I squirmed harder into him, arching my back to try to press my cock against his abdomen, and I felt his fingers touching my hole. And just as he started to play around the opening to my ass, he discovered that I’d been a good Boy Scout and I'd come in there prepared. I heard him groan my name into my neck, “Justin,” and then he bit me, hard.

His index fingers were in me, one from each hand, and he was bending them and moving them apart, opening me up almost roughly. I felt him brush against my prostate and my ass muscles clamped on his fingers, and he groaned again. He pulled his fingers out and gripped the backs of my thighs and stood up abruptly. I heard the iPod fall to the floor. I clung to his neck and wrapped my legs tighter around him while he stepped over the weight bench and laid me down on the exercise mat next to it.

Brian stood over me and pulled his sweaty tank top off, and then yanked his shorts down and stepped out of them. His cock was standing up against his stomach and dripping wet at the tip, and I put my arms back and looked up at him while he stared down at me, breathing hard.

He knelt between my legs, never taking his eyes off mine. I licked my lips and felt myself flushing. My cock was straining against my sweatpants, and there was a wet patch showing through the thin fabric. Brian smiled and tugged my pants down, jerking them roughly past my ass and off my legs. He ran his hands up the insides of my legs, pressing my thighs apart. My skin prickled everywhere, even where he wasn’t touching me, and I could feel my heart pounding. I almost couldn’t breathe.

His fingers were playing at the backs of my knees, and I lifted my legs up without thinking. He slid his arms under them and jerked me up and towards him, lifting my ass off the mat and shoving his knees under me. I let my legs fall down, caught on his arms. His cock was pressing against my ass, and without touching it, he pulled his hips back and moved in close again. I felt his cock head prodding at my hole, and I shifted a little. I felt him press against me, and then pull back a tiny bit, and then press again, harder, and I felt myself opening up for him and the head slipped in.

He stayed there, where I was tightest, and I felt him stretching me, felt the blood beating in my ass and throbbing in his cock. I bit my lower lip and relaxed and he moved in a little deeper, and I tightened on him again, and then opened. He pulled me in closer and I felt his cock sliding deeper into me, felt the head prodding at my prostate, and I moaned and closed my eyes, then opened them before he could even ask me to.

He kept rocking against me, the smooth head of his cock pushing at that one spot, the pleasure shooting out in little explosions to my balls and cock and even down the insides of my thighs. The backs of my legs were sliding against him while he thrust into me, and he was staring at me with his lips folded in, his eyes as dark as I’d ever seen them.

I felt a wave of feeling explode out from inside my ass. I didn’t want to come yet, and I tried to grab onto something, but there was nothing, no sheets to clutch, no pillows, and Brian’s hands were too far away for me to reach.

I groaned his name, “Brian,” and he pulled my hips in even closer, and unbent his arms and let me grab his hands. I held onto him and it grounded me a little, let me ride the waves of feeling instead of getting swept away by them, at least for a while. He started to thrust into me more deeply. He let go of my hands and let my legs drop down, and he leaned over me. I got my legs up around his back, twining my ankles together. He had his weight on his arms on either side of my head, and I turned my face and kissed his wrist. He bent down and I opened my mouth for his tongue, and played with it with mine, and then he started to fuck me faster, the muscles in his stomach clenching and his hips pumping into me. I grabbed onto his upper arms and angled my ass a little, and he gasped when he slid in deeper.  I knew he was close, and I reached for my cock, my other hand going up and resting on the back of his neck.

Brian’s forehead was pressed against mine when he started to come, and he made a choked sound that pushed me over the edge, too. I was gripping his neck so hard I was curving up off the mat, and he was buried all the way in my ass, while he shuddered his orgasm into me, his balls pressed against me.

We were soaking wet, a mess of sweat and come, and he was crushing me into the floor, and I wanted to lie there for the rest of my life and never move again. And I think he felt the same way, because he just lay on top of me, breathing hard.

After a long time he grunted and shifted himself enough to pull his cock out of me, and then moved his weight partially off me to the floor. He sighed and pulled me so my head was under his chin, and then started his usual post-fuck playing with my hair.

I smiled even though he couldn’t see my face. “So, dancing.”

Brian sighed against my hair and shifted all the way onto his side, looking at me. “Maybe not tonight. Tomorrow.”

I smiled and turned and faced him, putting my hand on the side of his face. “Maybe, a shower? And dinner? We could go out to dinner, unless it’s too much like a date for you.”

He grinned at me. “We didn’t get any non-dating clauses into the prenuptial agreement, did we?”

“No, after we’d gone around a few times on the blowjob language, I think we decided to let it go.”

Brian buried his face in my hair again. “Mmmmm. Blowjobs. I remember those.”

“You should, you had one yesterday.”

“That seems like a really long time ago.” He was nibbling at my ear lobe.

“We could order pizza. And get in the hot tub. You might get lucky.” I was smiling.

“You’re going to feed me, booze me up, put me into a stupor with a blowjob, tuck me into bed, and then stay up all night drawing again, aren’t you?”

I kissed his jaw. “Yeah. Is that bad?”

Brian twisted his lips in and then shrugged. “It’s bad, you might wake me up when you come to bed.”

I hid my smile in his neck.

“What?”

“You miss me when I’m not there.”

Silence.

“You hate sleeping without me.”

He gave a little huff.

I lifted up on my elbow and looked at him. “You so love me. You can’t even sleep without me anymore. I’m going to give you ten blowjobs for that.”

Brian smiled.

Brian’s POV

After we showered, I let Justin feed me pizza in front of the television, and then I nuzzled at his crotch while he licked cheese and tomato sauce off his fingers and laughed. In a strange way I felt both domesticated and like a teenager at the same time. I started to lick his fingers too, but he’d gotten all the good tastes off, so I pulled his sweatpants down and did something else with my mouth. His hands were in my hair when he came, his legs still crossed in front of him, and my arms wrapped around his hips.

“I thought I was going to do that for you.” He was petting my hair.

I grinned up at him from his lap, and gestured at my crotch. “Go for it.”

He laughed and untangled his legs, curving himself down and kissing me, pushing me to the side while he slid down my body. He unbuttoned my jeans with one hand while I stroked his hair, and then he started to lick the head of my cock. That’s all he did. He didn’t touch me with his hands, he didn’t even let his tongue dip below the rim. He tongued my slit and licked me and in less than a minute I was groaning his name and fisting his hair and pumping my hips into his face.

Which seemed to be what he’d been waiting for, because he shifted himself a little more and dropped down on my cock with his mouth and took me into his throat. He moaned, and I felt his throat moving around the head of my cock while his tongue kept licking at that spot below the rim that he knew made me nuts. I pulled out and his tongue dragged over the vein on my shaft, and then flattened out on the underside while I thrust back in.

I came deep in his throat, feeling it vibrating around me while he moaned and swallowed, and he lay there for a long time afterward. I kept my hands in his hair and let him rest his head on my thigh. I didn’t think about anything.

Finally he shifted back up to lie next to me. “This is our night for fucking on the floor. You’d never know we have eight bedrooms.”

I smiled with my eyes closed. “Bed. That sounds good.”

“Have I managed to wear you out?”

I opened my eyes and laughed. “You can hardly lift your head up, Justin. Which one of us is worn out?”

Justin bit my chin and then we went upstairs.

When I got into bed, he climbed in with me.

“You going to stay, or are you just humoring me?”

He kissed my jaw and cuddled up to me. “I’ll stay.”

I figured he’d sneak off as soon as I fell asleep, and maybe that’s what he meant to do. But when I opened my eyes in the morning, Justin was curled on his side, breathing slowly, sound asleep. I stuck the clock in the bedside drawer, closed the drapes, and went downstairs to make coffee.

I was sitting by the pool drinking it when I heard Emmett pull up, and I let him in the gate.

“Hey, sweetie!” He braved my stubble, my glare, and my bed head and kissed me on the cheek. “Where’s Justin?”

“Sleeping Beauty?”

Emmett laughed. “Still wearing that boy out?”

“Not me… Rage. He’s been drawing that fucking comic all night for a week now. I’m about ready to pay Michael to off him in the next issue.”

“I don’t think you’ll get either of them to kill their hero, honey. Think about it. Your best friend and your boyfriend, killing you?”

“There have been times either or both would have gladly done it.”

That shut Emmett up, but only briefly. “Not recently.”

I thought about that for a while, looking at the pool glumly. “Well, they’re ganging up on him in this issue.”

“Zephyr and JT?” He looked confused.

I shook my head. “No, Michael told me that he and Justin have brought back all Rage’s enemies from every issue before this one, and they’ve banded together to take him out.”

Emmett was making an earnest effort to get this to make sense. “Most of them are dead.”

“Rage and Zephyr can fly. They go to other planets. Reality isn’t a strong focus of the series.”

“Ice Tina?”

I nodded.

“Rev. Swineheart?”

“Yup.”

“The zombies?”

“What part of ‘all Rage’s enemies from every issue before this one’ did you not get?”

“How did they bring them back?”

“Remember the Governor, from the planet where JT and Rage went to get married?”

“Sure, Rage had him put on a penal world.”

“It was a minimum security penal world, for white collar intergalactic criminals.”

“Naturally.”

“He busted out, along with some mad scientist imprisoned there, who knew how to re-animate the dead.”

Emmett nodded sympathetically. “I hate when that happens.”

I had to agree.

Justin’s POV

I woke up in the bed alone. I didn’t see the clock, but Brian usually just stuck it in the drawer, so I checked and it was almost 11. I got up and put on my swim trunks.

I went out by the pool with coffee and my laptop. I could see Brian and Emmett down at the tennis court. I watched them for a while, Emmett in a loose white shirt with only one button done, and pale blue pants, and Brian wearing skin-tight black long-legged swim trunks, his muscles, and a tan.

I was reading email when they came back up. I held up my cheek for a kiss from Emmett, and Brian dropped down next to me on the lounge chair.

“So, are you going to jackhammer up the tennis court?”

Emmett laughed. “No, just take down the fence and change the lighting. You’ll love it.”

“I always wanted a country estate with a pool, stables, and a dance floor in the middle of the lawn.” I set my laptop down on the ground next to the chair, and Brian scooted a little closer to me. All that stored up heat from standing out in the sun with Emmett radiated out from his skin. I couldn’t stop myself from touching him.

Emmett was watching us, an amused expression on his face. “Is there more coffee, Justin?”

“There’s a whole pot, I can get you some.” I needed another cup myself.

But Emmett just smiled. “I can get my own, and I’ll get you a refill, and it’s actually just an excuse to give the two of you a moment alone to do whatever it is you do when you’re alone and half-undressed and no one’s here watching.”

Emmett went to the kitchen, and Brian grinned and rolled into me playfully.

I laughed. “Better be careful, Brian, that swimsuit hides nothing at all.” He had approximately seven hundred swimsuits, even though he swam nude unless there was company. This one fit his crotch like it was made for him. Which it might have been, knowing Brian.

“I have nothing to hide.” He looked smug.

“You have plenty to hide.”

“I have plenty. That’s why I don’t hide it.” He let his legs fall open and pulled my hand to his crotch.

“Here, Justin, something hot to hold.” It was Emmett, handing me my coffee. I snatched my hand away from Brian’s crotch while they both laughed, and I pushed Brian away from me with my feet, spilling a little hot coffee on him when it splashed over the edge of the cup.

Brian and Emmett went into the house so Brian could sign checks, something I was happier not seeing, as Brian’s budget for this party was currently more than I made in a year. I read my email. Daphne wanted to stop by, my mother was wondering if Brian and I wanted to have dinner, and Michael was asking about changing the time of our next work session. And there was an email sent jointly to Michael and me, confirming a phone interview we were doing with a New York radio station on independent comics. After Emmett left, Brian came back out and stripped off his trunks and dove in the water.

Later that afternoon I was working on Rage in my studio, trying to fight down the urge to paint. I felt my hand tensing up, and knew I should switch to the computer before it started to cramp. I had several hours of work ahead of me, and there wasn’t any reason to push it. But I just didn’t feel like dealing with the computer, and so I threw down my pen and got up abruptly and went to my easel.

I hadn’t started this painting yet, but I’d finished two in the series of four. They were leaning against the wall, hidden by a large canvas. I moved the canvas out of the way and pulled the two paintings out, and leaned them against the wall. I liked them. A lot. They weren’t my first acrylic-on-fiberglass works, but they were the first ones I’d kept and liked. No one had seen them yet, not even Brian. I’d borrowed from my Rage time to paint them, because I couldn’t help it. Just like I couldn’t help it today.

“Fuck.” I jumped. Brian had walked in barefoot, and I hadn’t heard him. “Fuck, Justin, when did you do these?”

“Last week, when I should have been working on Rage.”

“This is why you’ve been doing all the late nights, catching up?”

I nodded.

He stood there looking for a while. The paintings were very similar to each other. I’d run thin ropes of color in a computer-generated grid pattern all over the white surface, colors very different from anything I’d worked with before, sort of fake-looking fifties ice-cream toned pastels, teal and lavender and bright yellow. I’d taken a very fine brush and almost imperceptibly blurred each line, and then laid a single copper wire, so fine you could barely see it, along a few of the lines, to one side, or the other, or down the middle, randomly.

Each grid converged so slightly you practically didn’t notice it until you saw both paintings next to each other, drawing the eye to a different area in each painting. I wanted to see all four of them together so much I almost couldn’t concentrate on anything else.

Brian was staring at them, and kind of frowning. “What?”

He shook his head. “They’re great. I want them.”

“I told you, you can have first refusal on anything I paint. But I have to have them for the show. And you’ll have to buy them from Armand, I have a contract.”

“I know.” He stood there looking, and then sighed. “Justin, you need to work on these. Can’t you get an extension on the comic?”

“Sure. But then I’ll just have to do it later. And this isn’t a stand-alone issue, it’s a cliffhanger, which means we have to do the next one pretty quickly, so it doesn’t really buy me a lot of time. And I promised Michael.”

Brian started to object but I cut him off. “I don’t come to Kinnetik and try to set your priorities for you, Brian.”

“You’re being rational. I hate that.”

“You’ll have to find a way to live with it.”

I realized I was rubbing my hand, and that Brian had noticed. I stopped, because I’m brilliant and keep thinking that if I stop rubbing it he’ll forget he saw me rubbing it. But he didn’t say anything about my hand, just put his arm around my shoulder and stood staring at my paintings.

“I want them for Kinnetik.”

I liked that. “They kind of remind me of Kinnetik, actually.”

He leaned his cheek against my hair. “Have I ever mentioned that you’re incredibly talented?”

I smiled so hard my face hurt. “Yeah, once or twice. You can say it as much as you want, though.”

“When will you be done with this issue of Rage?”

“I’m shooting for a few days before the end of the month, to leave a little time for last minute changes. It’s due on the 30th.” Our party was on the first, so I wanted to finish early if I could.

“I know there’s nothing I can do, but is there anything I can do? Bribe someone, have anyone killed or kidnapped, remodel something?”

I thought about it for a minute. “You already make coffee and fuck me regularly, that covers the really important things.”

“Caffeine and sex. The basics of life.”

I abruptly turned around and wrapped my arms around Brian, hiding my face in his chest. “You do everything I need, Brian. I love you.”

I know I surprised him, but he just stood there with his arms around me for a long time. And when I finally looked up at him, he said, “I love you, too.”

Brian’s POV

I was rubbing the bridge of my nose and wondering if it was totally irresponsible to have a drink in the middle of a conference call, and if anyone would know if I snuck away from the speakerphone to get one. Ted came into the room and pointed at his watch, and I smiled.

“Everyone, I’m sorry, but my next appointment is here. It sounds like we’ve got all the basic details worked out…” a thousand times over… “so I’ll have Cynthia write something up for your review.” Cynthia took that as her cue and I left the phone call as she took over.

“Thanks, the next time I fire you, remind me I owe you.”

“No problem, their interview starts in about three minutes.”

I’d already loaded the radio station’s website, and clicked on the streaming audio. Ted sat down on the sofa, and I leaned back in my desk chair and started to flip through the notes for a meeting I had later that afternoon. The interview started, and I more or less tuned it out, until I heard the interviewer introduce Justin and Michael.

I’d read every interview ever done about Rage, including all the ones that came out when Justin was off with the fiddler. As far as I knew, and I knew, this was the first audio interview they’d ever done. Underground x-rated gay comics weren’t exactly in huge demand on talk media. I knew what the interviewers usually asked, and this one didn’t ask anything new.

It’s just I’d never actually heard Justin answering these questions before. They asked about the explicit sexual content, about the upcoming issue, about how Michael and Justin had started writing, about Michael’s comic book store. And then they asked what they always asked, about Justin’s bashing and the story of the first issue of Rage.

And I heard Justin answering the questions in a perfectly normal voice, as if it had happened to someone else and not him.

Sometimes interviewers asked about me, but only if they were from the gay media. This one didn’t. After they covered the basics, they moved on to the other guests, and I sat there not really listening, pretending to read the notes, wondering how Justin got to where he could talk about it in that calm way, telling a story he didn’t actually remember, a story he’d only heard from me.

“Brian?” I wasn’t really sure how long Ted had been standing there. I looked up from the papers in front of me.

“Yeah?”

Ted didn’t say anything for a minute, just looked at me. I looked back at him, keeping my expression blank. Finally I lifted an eyebrow. That got him talking.

“What did you think?”

“About what?”

“The interview.” Ted had that patient tone in his voice.

I shrugged. “Same as they always are, geeks saying geeky things about comic books, Michael and Justin giving the same answers to the same questions.”

“I’m assuming you’ll phrase that differently when Justin and Michael ask how you thought they did?”

“I’ll try to have some appropriate remarks prepared before I go home tonight. Anything else?”

I should have known better than to give him a lead like that. He hesitated, and I used my powers of mind control to tell him to stop talking and leave.

Rage didn’t let me down. Ted left.

Justin called on my cell phone a few minutes later. “Hey.”

“How’d it sound?”

“Good. Both of you sounded good, if I didn’t already have at least a dozen copies of every issue I’d have run right out and bought them.” I was trying to sound light.

It seemed to work, because he laughed a little. “Okay. I’m heading home, unless you want to have lunch with us at the diner. I need to get back to work.” They’d gotten together at Michael’s store to do the interview.

I passed on lunch. I had to get back to work myself. I sat there eating a salad Elaine had brought me, and checking my personal email. My cell phone rang, but I didn’t recognize the number.

“Hi, Brian, I thought maybe I’d catch you on a lunch break.” It was Daphne.

“I’m shoveling in food as we speak. What’s up?”

“Did Justin talk to you about my master’s thesis topic?”

Daphne must be the woman with the worst timing on earth.

“Yes.”

She didn’t sound reassured at the brevity of my response. Which I wish had been a clue to her, but she pushed ahead.

“I know Justin hasn’t decided if he wants to be interviewed for it or not, but I was hoping, either way, you would. Let me interview you, I mean.”

“What about?”

“Justin being bashed.”

“No.” I knew I should apologize or something, but fuck it. “Daphne, I need to go. My appointment is here.” And I hung up. And sat there at my desk wondering what kind of fucked up cosmic energy was converging on me today, and why.

I got home late. I’d picked up takeout on my way home, but there was a pan soaking in the sink, so it looked like Justin had already eaten. I wasn’t really hungry so I put the food in the refrigerator.

I could hear music from the studio, but I decided to let him work and went into the media room. I almost went to my computer, then turned on the TV instead, some inane reality show I wasn’t really going to watch. I flipped from station to station for a while, but there wasn’t anything on. I left it on CNN and went and got a bottle of scotch from the bar and sat down with it. I didn’t bother with a glass.

I started feeling a little better after a few swallows, and loosened my tie and took off my shoes and socks. I decided to find Justin. He was sitting at his computer, his right hand holding the stylus, his left hand cradling his right wrist. I felt angry, and waited until the feeling went away before I said anything.

“Hey.”

He looked up at me, surprised, and put down the stylus. He turned around and lowered the volume on the music, and smiled at me. “Hey.”

I walked over to the worktable and sat down. There was a stack of drawings on the table, and I pulled the top one over and looked at it. It was nothing, just Zephyr running down a street.

Justin came and sat next to me, and put the drawing back where I’d found it. He seemed a little uncertain. I didn’t look at him, just picked up his right hand and held it in both of mine for a minute. It was shaking, very slightly, and I knew he wanted me to let it go. I could hear him silently telling me not to say anything. It wasn’t only Rage who had powers of mind control.

I started to rub it gently, and I felt him relax. That usually meant I wasn’t going to lecture him. And I didn’t.

“Why did you bring back the bashers?” And here I thought I never let anything unplanned come out of my mouth.

Justin was as surprised as I was. “Huh?”

“The comic. Why did you bring back the bashers? They weren’t Rage’s enemies. They were JT’s.”

Justin didn’t answer right away, and I still didn’t look at him. “Because they were the villains from the first issue, and because they challenged Rage after he stopped them from attacking JT, so Michael and I saw them as his enemies.”

This time I did look at Justin. His eyes were dark and he looked upset. “Doesn’t it bother you to draw that, to talk about it?”

He pulled his hand away. I think I was hurting him. But he didn’t get up.

“No. I don’t mind talking about it. Sometimes putting things behind you and not talking about them doesn’t work.”

I snorted. “Tell me about it.”

He waited. I got up and walked over to his easel, but the fiberglass panel was still untouched.

Justin walked up behind me, and his hesitancy was gone. He was always the bravest little fucker. “Let’s go to bed.”

“You go, I’m going to watch TV for a while.”

“You mean sit in there and get shitfaced.”

“Something like that.”

“Brian…” His voice trailed off.

I turned around and put my hands on the side of his head and pressed my forehead against his. “I’ll be okay, but you go to bed.”

He put his hands over mine and pressed back. “Come up with me. Just for a little while.”

I sighed. “Okay. For a little while.”

I lay in bed holding him. There was no way I was going to fall asleep, and I knew he was going to try to stay awake until I did. I felt angry again, and made the feeling go away. Justin hadn’t done anything to make me angry. But I could feel his worry radiating out of him and it was making me want to climb out of my skin.

I pulled him up into my arms and kissed him, thinking I could make him go to sleep faster if I fucked him, but he just kissed me softly, his hands on my face, and then pulled away, biting his lip and looking at me. I pretended nothing was wrong, and lifted my eyebrow.

“Not in the mood?”

He looked at me for a minute. “I don’t think you are.”

“I’m always in the mood.”

He smiled then, and I held him closer, and let my hand wander down to his ass. He pressed against me, and lifted up his face, and I kissed him again, but this time, something I was feeling got mixed in with the kiss. It felt a little desperate.

I gently pressed on his hip and he rolled over onto his stomach, and I reached for the lube. When I was inside him, I started feeling good again, and normal, and I thought, maybe Justin did know what I needed better than I did. I buried my face in his hair and kissed the back of his neck and his shoulders.

Justin’s POV

I had no idea what to do for Brian. He wasn’t tense like he sometimes was, when I could usually bully him into bed and seduce him out of it. He was blank. It had been a long time since I’d seen him like this, and I never had found anything that worked. It just took time.

I was lying with my head on his chest, trying to stay awake until he fell asleep. But even though we’d made love, he didn’t seem any closer to sleep. I could tell he was just waiting for me to fall asleep to go back downstairs. He’d done that before. I didn’t know why it bothered me so much that night, except for that blankness.

“Brian?”

“Hmmm?”

I hated myself for asking, but I did it anyway. “What’s wrong?” He was going to tell me nothing was wrong.

“Nothing.”

“You’re freaking out.” He wasn’t really, but I didn’t know what else to call it.

“I’m not freaking out. Go to sleep, Justin. I’m fine.”

“Bullshit. What happened?”

I heard him sigh. “Are you going to do that interview with Daphne?”

“I still don’t know, but I’m thinking I might, why?”

He didn’t answer right away. “She asked me.”

“To get me to talk to her?”

“No, she wants to interview me.”

I tried to hide my surprise. “What did you tell her?”

“I told her no. I don’t have anything to tell her that she doesn’t already know.”

I laughed a little, uneasily. “All she knows is what I told her, and all I know is what you told me. I think it’s safe to say you know more than either of us.”

Brian got out of bed.

“Brian…”

“Justin. I’ll be back up later, get some sleep.”

I got out of bed and put my arms around him. “Brian.”

He pulled my arms off his neck. He did it gently, but he did it. “Justin, don’t… don’t fucking comfort me for something that happened to you.”

I stepped back from him, a little shocked. And he turned and left the room.

I got back in bed and lay there for a while, feeling angry with Daphne. I wished she’d asked me before talking to him, and I wasn’t even sure if that was rational or not. I knew this was covered in the Kinney Operating Manual, but I had to have all the facts to know which section to look in. I’d been looking in the wrong one all night.

I woke up suddenly, with no memory of falling asleep. I looked at the clock. It was 4 am, and Brian wasn’t there. I got up and pulled on my sweats, and went downstairs to the media room.

I hesitated in the doorway. The light on the desk was on, but the rest of the room was dark, and I didn’t see him. I walked quietly to the sofa, and saw him lying on his side, his arms wrapped around himself, his eyes closed.

I almost just picked up a blanket to cover him and went back upstairs. It wasn’t the first night Brian had passed out on the sofa. It wouldn’t be the last. But instead I went over to the desk and turned off the light, got a blanket, and slid into the narrow space next to him, tucking myself into the curve of his drawn up knees. I pulled the blanket over us both.

He must have been closer to consciousness than I thought, because while I was settling against him, he unwrapped his arms and opened them up for me, pulling me tight into his chest. I lay there, feeling his heart beating against my back and his breath in my hair.

Everywhere he was pressed against me was warm, and I knew he had to be warm, nestled between me and the sofa back, covered with the blanket. But it felt a little like he was shivering, and he kept pulling me tighter. And he was kissing my hair.

“Brian.” I felt helpless. He thought I shouldn’t comfort him? It was killing me not to.

“I was so scared.” He was whispering. “I thought you were dead.”

For a minute I thought he was talking about the night Babylon was bombed, but then I realized those were the next two sentences of the conversation from hours before. I swallowed hard. I couldn’t think of anything to say, and I doubt I could have gotten anything out. I just kept my arms wrapped over his, around us both.

He drew a breath, and it sounded a little ragged. I felt his lips on my hair, but he didn’t say anything else. It still felt like he was shivering, and then I realized he was crying.

I turned around inside his arms, managing not to fall off the edge of the sofa. He let me turn and then nestled his chin on the top of my head, lifting his leg so I could slip mine in between his. I had my arms wrapped around him, under his arms. I held him as tightly as I could, tight enough to hurt. And after a while, the shivering stopped, and I gently kissed him on the neck, and relaxed my hold on him.

He sighed. “Eight bedrooms. And we’re jammed into this couch. Let’s not do this again.”

I just nodded. I still wasn’t sure I could talk.

He kissed my forehead. “Let’s go to bed.”

I leaned back and looked at him. “Okay.” Like that wasn’t where the whole conversation began.

He fell asleep almost the minute his head hit the pillow, one hand tangled in my hair and the other holding my hand. But I didn’t fall asleep until the sun was coming up.

Next Part