The Elliott Universe

By Yoursweater

Elliott

Summary: Elliott is a normal child as far as his teachers are concerned. He’s only five years old but he
knows his alphabet and the difference between green and blue, and when Mrs. Eleanor tells the class to
quiet down, Elliott is one of the first children to take his place on the checkered rug. He laughs quietly
with a hand over his mouth when his library buddy tells jokes, and carefully lines his crayons up across
his desk when it’s art time.

Elliott is a normal child as far as his teachers are concerned. He’s only five years old but he knows his
alphabet and the difference between green and blue, and when Mrs. Eleanor tells the class to quiet
down, Elliott is one of the first children to take his place on the checkered rug. He laughs quietly with a
hand over his mouth when his library buddy tells jokes, and carefully lines his crayons up across his desk
when it’s art time.

The problem is not with Elliott, the entire kindergarten staff thinks. The problem is with Elliott’s parents.

Maybe problem isn’t the right word. ‘Problem’ would insinuate that Elliott’s parents are doing
something wrong, when they’re not. Elliott’s parents are just… slightly edgy. Or one of them is, at least.

The day Mrs. Eleanor meets Elliott’s father is a day she still remembers. Only two weeks into the year
with the semi-clean room still smelling like drying glue and construction paper, she had been about half
way through her usual parent introductions. It was a Tuesday, she remembers, because there were still
handmade cereal box drums scattered over the carpet, which meant it was Music Day. Which always,
without fail, fell on the second day of each week. Tuesday.

She had been sitting at her desk, carefully going through each piece of thick construction paper with
scribbles of families and farms and friends on them, when he came in through the red painted door,
gray jacket flapping behind him.

When Mrs. Eleanor recalls the visit to the rest of the primary grade staff, they’ll smile when she tells
them how he sat in the child sized chair and listened as she talked about his son, how Elliott was one of
the children in her class with the most potential, and his only reply was – “I know.” They chuckle when
Mrs. Eleanor tells them how he had gone over to his son’s cubby, asking where it was so he could find
the missing Tupperware container that was the cause of much complaining around his household.

They share stories about all of their students as the year progresses, how one child in Mr. Marten’s class
fell out of a tree on the playground and broke his wrist on the hard pavement below it, and how the
teacher’s assistant in Ms. Linden’s class caught two of her second graders in the cloak room, kissing. But
the topic of a lot of stories, is Mrs. Eleanor’s Elliott.

Elliott is on time for the bell almost every day, but Mrs. Eleanor remembers one day when it was raining
and as a result, a quarter of the class arrived to the school either too early or slightly late. Elliott was one
of the children who was escorted through the door by a hasty parent that day, a rush of brown corduroy
pants and red sweaters as the class sat on the carpet in a circle, going through the coveted ritual of
flipping the day’s paper square on the calendar over to reveal the printed cartoon leaf with the date on
it. Mrs. Eleanor had looked up and into the apologetic eyes of Elliott’s father, bright blue and smiling
from across the room as he helped his son take his rain jacket off.

After that rainy October day, three months pass, full of stories about the boy with green gumboots and
dark brown hair, until the staff finally see part of the cause of the child’s happy personality at the Winter
Play, where Elliott is performing as the sixth reindeer in the second act. Mrs. Eleanor points his parents
out to two co-workers from backstage, her finger curved in the direction to where they’re both sitting in
the third row of the middle section. One looks perfectly cheery with a red scarf around his neck and that
smile on his face, the same one from that rainy day, while the other, the one that Mrs. Eleanor met
during the parent introduction week, sits beside him, slightly slumped down in his chair as he watches
the commotion around him.

The librarian, Anne, has a surprised expression on her face when she spots them, and Mrs. Eleanor
decides that “told you!” would not be a good thing to say. Instead she laughs and then points to the
sixth reindeer, who’s standing in line with the rest of the children in their antlers and face makeup. He’s
bouncing from foot to foot, eyes trained on nothing for more then a split second as he watches the
lights flash and then listens to the crowd murmur on the other side of the red curtain.

After the play the parents come back to the child’s classrooms to pick them up, and Mrs. Eleanor can
hear Elliott talking to another child, both of their voices loud over the heightened buzz of the room full
of parents around them. She glances over her shoulder, getting a glimpse of two children laughing
before she looks back down at her tray full of cookies and juice. People are squeezing around her, trying
to find their children in the commotion of the room, and she carefully sets the tray down on the snack
table so she can say goodbye to families as they leave.

As she’s saying goodbye to Amanda Martin’s parents - both calm and petite people, like their daughter -
she hears Elliott’s animated voice as he greets both of his fathers. She can hear their laughter blend into
everybody else’s as she smiles and pauses to help Luke Friedman pour himself another glass of fruit
punch and reach across the table for his third cookie. She’s not sure where his parents are.

“Want to see my coat hanger? It’s over there, come on. Come on!” Elliott’s opinionated voice pierces
through the crowd and Mrs. Eleanor turns around in time to see him, latched onto his father’s hand as
he drags him through the crowd. She’s not sure about the proper terminology, but his other father, the
blond one, follows them, an indulgent smile spread across his face. His gaze drifts from the two family
members in front of him and lands on hers, and the smile on his face grows.

“You’re Mrs. Eleanor, right?” He asks, closing the few steps between where he was and where she’s
standing beside the snack table.

“You must be Elliott’s father.” Mrs. Eleanor smiles, extending her hand to gesture behind them, to
where she can still hear the young boy’s voice drifting out of the cloak room. He’s insisting that his
father bend down to get a better look at where he keeps his gym shoes. “It’s very nice to finally meet
you.”

“Elliott loves your class, all he ever talks about are the art projects he learned and the new song he can
sing.” He smiles, lifting a hand to tuck his blond hair behind one ear. His eyes widen after a second and
he laughs, saying, “I guess I should introduce myself properly. I’m Justin Taylor.”

Mrs. Eleanor returns the smile and is about to reply when Elliott tears up to them both, his cheeks rosy
and eyes laced with sugar and excitement.

“Guess what?” He asks, tugging on Justin’s arm, and Justin bends down to pick him up. As Elliott is
explaining about how there was a spider inside his shoe and ‘daddy tried to kill it, but I said no daddy
and we put it out the window instead’, his other parent comes up, the one Mrs. Eleanor met in
September. He looks a lot like he did then, she notices, the same air around him and stride in his step.

“Right daddy?” Elliott leans back to look at his father upside down and he nods, reaching across to pull
Elliott from Justin’s arms.

“Brian this is Mrs. Eleanor, Elliott’s teacher.” Justin says, making a face as his watch gets caught on the
front of Elliott’s shirt as he’s handed over. He’s free after a moment and then turns around to face Mrs.
Eleanor once more.

“We’ve met.” He says, and he seems more interested in his son then the conversation taking place
around him. Mrs. Eleanor smiles politely but it turns into something more authentic when she catches
the grin Brian sends to Elliott as he rubs the face paint from his son’s cheek with the pad of his thumb.

Before they can say much else, Mrs. Eleanor’s arm is being tugged at by Rachel Smith, who can’t find her
parents. Mrs. Eleanor’s attention is pulled Elliott and his family and directed to Rachel instead, and she
helps her comb through the full room, looking for the two people that she lost.

When the staff return from Christmas holidays they catch up and talk about their vacations, small talk
filling the gaps in the conversation until Anne The Librarian gasps and claps her hands together, saying,
“You know who I almost forgot I saw? Elliott Kinney’s family.”

Mrs. Eleanor listens as Anne tells her about the couple of minutes she spent in a grocery store checkout
line with them, a few customers separating their purchases. She doesn’t say much else other then there
was a loud, red headed woman with them that swore a lot, and they left before she could say hello.

The rest of the year progresses and Mrs. Eleanor continues to watch her students change little by little,
until it’s May and the end of the year activities are being prepared. Just like every year, the two
kindergarten classes plan to go down to the water park and have a picnic with the children and their
families, a day full of rice krispie squares and hot dogs dripping with ketchup. Over the weeks in May
each invitation comes back with the six dollars required from each student who wishes to attend, until
the entire class has a red star beside their name.

On the day of the picnic, the whole school seems to be busy, the seventh graders getting ready to leave
on their annual camping trip, and the fifths preparing to go to the wax museum. Mrs. Eleanor hurries
around the classroom, glad that the families are meeting her at the park so she doesn’t have to make
sure every child has their sunscreen and swim shorts.

Mrs. Eleanor gets to the park twenty minutes before the families do so she can help the other
kindergarten staff set up, stacking paper plates and counting out cupcakes to make sure there are
enough for everyone. The sun is ridiculously hot and she slathers sunscreen on her shoulders and the
back of her neck so she doesn’t get burnt, then continues to unwrap the home made cookies that the
children brought to class the day before.

When the families begin to arrive the stress fades away and is replaced by laughter as the children run
around the grass and wade in the shallow pool. Mrs. Eleanor stands to the side with Anne and the rest
of the teachers, watching the year play out in front of them as the remainder of the families arrive and
their children run around, playing tag.

Elliott and his family arrive fifteen minutes after the first family showed up, and he tears ahead of his
parents, grin spread wide across his face as he waves his arm around, letting his small group of friends
sitting under a nearby tree know that he’s arrived. Justin catches Mrs. Eleanor’s eye and waves with a
small smile as a ‘hello’, and she returns the smile as the two men follow their son across the grass.

The day turns into afternoon and it’s as fun as the year before, Mrs. Eleanor thinks, as she cuts another
piece of cake and hands it to Brittany Alexander. She can hear Elliott’s voice a few feet away, where he’s
sitting with his parents, demanding that one of them have a piece of cake. Mrs. Eleanor smiles and
shakes her head as Elliott’s father argues with him like he’s an adult, something about carbs and icing
and how he doesn’t want to have to spend another ten minutes doing crunches.

Elliott’s family has three pieces of cake that day, one for each of them.

When the last day of school rolls around Mrs. Eleanor hands out a report card to each student, full of
ones and twos and threes, and tells them that she’ll see everyone in September when they come back
for the first grade. Daniel Kilpatrick is the first out the door when the bell rings, and each student leaves
until Mrs. Eleanor is sure she’s the only one remaining.

It isn’t until she’s back sitting at her desk, ready to clean out her drawers that Elliott Kinney pokes his
head back into the classroom. He has a wide grin spread across his face, all crooked teeth and dimples as
he says in that too adult for a five year old voice, “Thank you for teaching me shapes,” and then he’s
gone again, giggling and squeaky footsteps echoing down the hall.

Elliott: Crayon Physics

When Elliott was three, he put a piece of crayon up his nose.

Brian had been the one who discovered it first, eyes wide and eyebrows raised as he carefully surveyed
the still sharpened end of the crayon that had been originally thought to be harmless, but was currently
wedged deep into his son’s nostril.

“Justin?” He had called out carefully, glancing over his shoulder quickly and then training his gaze back
on the child in front of him, just to make sure that he didn’t vanish to somewhere unreachable by full
grown human size before the small object could be removed. “Come here for a second.”

Justin had appeared behind the couch, looking down to where Elliott was slapping his palms flat against
the surface of the coffee table and jumping up and down on his feet, apparently oblivious to the piece of
wax in his nose.

“What?” Justin had asked, leaning forward and bracing his hands against the back of the couch to follow
Brian’s gaze and peer down at his son.

“I think he has a crayon up his nose.” Brian had said very carefully, fully aware that Justin had more
talent then Jennifer and Emmett combined at queening out. Justin’s eyes had widened, a little more
dramatically then Brian’s had, before he walked around the side of the couch to kneel down beside his
son, who was still content with the bouncing he was doing.

“Elliott.” Justin waved his hand to get his son’s attention, and Elliott had turned to the side to face him, a
wide grin breaking out across his face when he noticed how arched Justin’s eyebrows were. They almost
disappeared into his hairline, the same way the crayon pretty much disappeared up Elliott’s nose. “Holy
fuck.”

An hour later found them in the diner. Elliott sat on the counter top as Debbie tried to pick the crayon
out with her finger, customers watched from their respective booths, and Brian and Justin argued a few
feet away – something about how Brian never should have let a three year old watch that episode of
The Simpsons. In the end Elliott just screamed really loud and Brian threatened to leave twice after the
argument about The Simpsons turned to the basic logistics of a three year old cramming an entire
crayon up his nose. It just wasn’t possible.

“Should we take him to the hospital?” Justin had asked Debbie while they both blew on Elliott’s face to
try and get him to sneeze. Brian told them both they were going to destroy his son in more ways then a
crayon up the nose would, and at first Justin had disagreed but then Debbie told them both that it was
what she did to Michael once when he stuck a piece of corn up one nostril and a purple bead in the
other. At that point Justin figured maybe that was why Michael was so… Michael, and promptly moved
Elliott from the counter to announce that they were in fact going to go to the emergency room.

They sat in the waiting room at the hospital for three and a half hours. Elliott breathed really loud, Brian
complained about whatever he saw fit, and Justin tried to block them both out. A bordering overweight
nurse moved them from the waiting room to a cubicle with a curtain, where they sat for another half
hour until a doctor came in. At that point Brian was threatening to sue anybody who looked at him
funny, and Elliott was half asleep and drooling in Justin’s lap.

“He has a piece of crayon up his left nostril.” The doctor had told them, after a thorough exploration of
Elliott’s now red nose with the small flashlight that had materialized from his front pocket. Justin had
nodded like he’d just been told the sky was really red, and Brian just rolled his eyes and complained
again.

“So can you get it out?” Justin had asked, standing up to set Elliott down on the paper covered
examination table. The doctor nodded and rummaged around in a drawer for a few moments before
pulling out a silver tool that looked suspiciously like a set of tweaked out pliers. “Uh, you’re going to use
that?”

Brian left the examination room with a sobbing Elliott in one arm and a woozy Justin behind him,
something about how he thought he was going to faint when the doctor twisted ‘that frontal lobe
removal tool’ up Elliott’s nose. It had been a completely harmless procedure, the doctor had assured
them both, and Brian was pretty sure that Elliott was just crying because he knew he’d get ice cream out
of the whole ordeal anyways. Then Brian kind of had a proud moment because his son was only three
years old but already he’d learnt how to successfully con stuff out of his elders. Except Brian definitely
wasn’t old.

On the way home Elliott fell asleep in his car seat and Justin complained a lot about how the doctor had
forced that tool up Elliott’s nose, but then Brian reminded him that technically Elliott forced a yellow
crayon up his nose anyways, so really it was a moot point on Justin’s end.

Brian didn’t get any that night, and Justin had a scowl on his face the entire way home.

The One Where Brian Sells the Loft

They decide to move out of the loft when Elliott turns nine months old, because Justin never stops
complaining about the lack of space, and Brian ends up in a mood worse then usual whenever he tries to
work but all he can hear is Elliott crying.

So Justin tells his mother, and Jennifer ends up putting together a folder full of locations that are
available and in the price range that Brian refuses to buy under. She tells her girlfriend over brunch one
day that she finds it kind of funny that her best customer is also her… well, she still hasn’t figured out
what exactly Brian is to her yet, but she figures it must be something important, considering she got a
grandchild out of it.

Brian goes through the folder by himself first, vetoing seven out of the ten prospective lots of property
before Justin manages to get a glimpse of them for himself.

“Fuck you, this is advertised as ‘country chic’.” Brian says one morning, scowling at Justin from his side
of the kitchen island. Justin rolls his eyes and moves the baby from one knee to the other. “I don’t do
country anything.”

“Excluding cowboys.” Justin smirks, tongue in his cheek as he looks over at Brian.

The coffee maker starts to drip just as Brian clarifies, “I’m not living in a barn.”

…

Almost a month after they start looking for a new place, they finally go and tour the first piece of
property that Brian sees fit for the three of them to live in.

“Isn’t this pretty much just a bigger and more expensive version of the loft?” Justin asks, looking out of
the car window as they pull up in front of an old and now gutted industrial building downtown.

“I looked at your stupid paint chips, and I agreed to the wood floor.” Brian says as he shuts off the
engine. “So shut up and get out of the car.”

Justin takes his seatbelt off, pushes his door open, and tries to hide a grin.

…

The first legitimate house they look at has no indoor plumbing installed because the previous contractor
cancelled without notice, and Brian is more horrified then that one time he found Ted in the backroom
at Babylon.

“We’re lowering the asking price a great deal to compensate.” The real estate agent tells them both, and
Justin is dimly interested until he notices the cracked floorboards and uneven ceilings.

Later that night at the diner, Justin complains about the fact that the place was a complete dump with a
location worth the bordering a million dollar asking price, Debbie smothers Elliott in her usual style, and
Brian sneers when Michael suggests a two story house that’s going up for rent near his and Ben’s place.

“Just because I have a kid doesn’t mean I’m going to move to Stepford World.” Brian states, and Justin’s
kind of glad that he does – even if it’s the millionth time he’s said it – just because he doesn’t really want
to move to Pleasantville either.

…

Jennifer puts the loft on the market, and three days after it’s listed they have an open house. Brian takes
Elliott and disappears to the Muncher’s House to see Gus, because he’s suspicious that the entire
population of his past tricks will take the chance to parade through the house even if they have no
intention to purchase it. Justin stays quiet most of the time, putting his Country Club manners out to
show when he greets the potential buyers and then directs them towards his mother for the business
side of things.

A family that looks like they fell out of Michael’s neighborhood appears around noon – two guys with
matching khaki pants and a redheaded teenager that trails behind them with a set of expensive
headphones on his ears – and they quietly discuss the property with each other, considering it as
potential studio space. Justin doesn’t tell Brian about them when he comes back that afternoon,
because he’s pretty sure the thought of two “pseudo breeders” using the loft for anything will break
Brian’s heart.

The next day they go to look at some ridiculously expensive place five minutes away from downtown.
Jennifer shows them around since it’s one of her clients that’s selling, and Brian is bordering impressed
at the high beam ceilings and polished floors.

“It looks like the loft does, only it has two floors and a basement attached.” Justin muses, setting Elliott
down on one of the kitchen stools. He squirms around and eventually slides his way down to the floor,
then uses Brian’s leg to pull his uncoordinated body up until he’s standing on wobbly feet.

“I want it.” Brian says, and Justin would probably try to argue against the defiant tone in Brian’s voice if
he didn’t secretly want it too.

…

The loft ends up selling to Brian Kinney Revisited, Justin tells Daphne a few weeks later. She helps him
pack up the assortment of shit in the storage space underneath the hallway stairs, and Justin almost
forgot about it until he started to wonder where his really old artwork was.

“It must attract people who have a personality like Brian’s.” Daphne says, like she’s diagnosing some
type of disease on a patient she doesn’t have the doctor’s degree for. “I read about it in a psychology
book.” She continues, pulling a canvas half the size of her body from behind last year’s set of living room
furniture. “Was he hot?”

Justin sits back on his feet and tries to remember the guy who looked like he was in a church as Jennifer
gave him a quick tour around the potential space.

“I don’t really remember.” Justin says finally, shrugging. “He could’ve been.”

…

Daphne stays for dinner after she spends three hours packing the entire closet of clothes that only two
gay guys could have, an assortment of overpriced pieces of junk Brian has collected over the years and
called art, and Elliott’s extended toy collection.

“So is he walking yet?” She asks, nodding across the loft - which is more empty then usual - to where
Elliott is holding onto the back of the sofa and jumping up and down as Brian tries to watch a movie.

Justin looks over his shoulder to where the television is and then back to Daphne, who has half of a
carrot stick in her mouth.

“Almost. Emmett is convinced that he’s the one who taught him how, because he was sitting with Elliott
in the diner at the time.” Justin smirks, opening the refrigerator door. “He and Brian argued about it for
days.”

…

They move into the new house, and the first thing Justin does in the kitchen is spray himself with the
apparently secretly faulty sink faucet. Brian laughs about it for hours, replaying the image of a soaked
and scowling Justin in his mind as Justin calls a plumber and very calmly tries to explain the current sink
situation.

…

It’s about a week after they’ve moved into the new place when Elliott gets a box of crayons for little to
no reason one day, Brian just produces them from his suitcase and hands them over. The majority of
their belongings are still in cardboard boxes or sitting under white sheets in the garage, and while Justin

is trying to hang a picture in the living room and Brian denies that he’s eating ice cream in the kitchen,
Elliott crawls into the front hallway with a few already broken crayons in one fist.

When Justin comes out of the living room ten minutes later with a nearly smashed thumb and three
bent nails, the hallway is adorned with scribbles and assorted wobbly shapes in black crayon.

He leans against the doorframe and crosses his arms over his chest, trying to figure out what the slightly
flattened circle in the middle of a bunch of bordering straight lines could mean.

“When are the paint guys coming?” Justin calls, and in the kitchen he hears Brian’s feet on the wood
floor, and then the freezer opens and closes with a muted thump. Elliott realizes someone’s standing
behind him and tilts his head backwards with a wide grin on his face, and Justin has to reach forward
and grab him before he falls over due to lack of balance and an abnormally large head.

“Tomorrow.” Brian replies finally, and when Justin picks up Elliott and takes him into the kitchen, he
finds Brian at the counter, peeling an apple.

“Just don’t go into the front hall until then.” Justin says, not bothering to explain why. Brian doesn’t
bother asking him to elaborate, anyway.

The One Where Elliott Meets Joan

When Elliott meets Joan Kinney, it’s an accident.

Brian folded on Elliott’s second birthday, when he wanted an ice cream cake. And that time Justin got
called into the studio on short notice and Brian was stuck doing the grocery shopping and ended up with
his kid in tow, wanting anything within reach that contained any trace of sugar. He hadn’t complained
that much when he ended up coming home with three different types of cookies, and really the only
time Brian’s answer was no to anything concerning his son, was the night he and Justin discussed Brian’s
(technical) family.

And so the rule was that Elliott would never be introduced to Aunt Claire, and lucky that Jack was dead
because Elliott would never know that grandfather either. But above all else, he would not under any
circumstances, ever have to meet Joan Kinney.

Which is why it had been such a surprise when Justin ended up running into the woman in the middle of
aisle four at Liberty Grocery. In fact, at first he hadn’t even been sure it was her. Because honestly, Joan
Kinney in any building that had ‘liberty’ attached to it was like Jesus traveling in a Ford Explorer. It just
didn’t happen.

When he had recognized the haggard gray hair and tight lips, the same uncomfortable feeling had
settled into his stomach, just like the first and only other time he’d met her – not counting the
numerous amount of awkward times where he’d pick up the phone and she’d be on the other end.
Justin would have to make excuses as to where Brian was, when Justin knew full well that the man was
down at Babylon, personally approving each dancer’s wardrobe.

And in the grocery store, Justin had a moment where he thought he could just walk away and not have
to say a word, but then their eyes met and he found himself freezing up on the spot. And in that one
second, he got a plain glimpse into the rest of Brian’s life.

“Uh, hi.” He’d managed to say, offering a lame hand for her to shake. Immediately she’d declined, and
Justin had found his arm dropping back down to his side as his mind raced through his Country Club
introductions, trying to find one suitable for someone who thought he would end up in something lower
than hell. He had only been one breath away from talking about the weather and folding under Joan’s
sharp stare when he’d heard the clatter of objects coming from behind him, and then a soft ‘oops’. “Aw,
Elliott. For fucks sake.”

Justin had been so busy picking up soup cans from the floor and restocking the otherwise model shelf of
them, that he hadn’t even registered the utterly shocked expression on Joan’s usually tight face. And
whether it was from the fact that there was a kid in the literal picture or that Justin had swore (in public,
none the less) is still up for debate.

“Uh, Joan…” He’d said finally, and he could already hear Brian yelling, but his plan to never have Elliott
meet his mother had worked a ton easier when Justin wasn’t cornered by the woman in a canned goods
aisle. And when Justin had finally managed to look up at Joan, he discovered that they both knew she
had already realized exactly who the short terror belonged to. “This is Elliott.”

When Elliott offered a short and half distracted “Hi!”, Justin had watched the evolution take place on
Joan’s face. The surprise turned into sourness, the sourness into anger and the anger into her favorite
thing. Denial.

“Your brother?” She’d asked, her voice all prim and fucking pristine. Justin scratched behind his ear and
looked down at the kid who really was just a smaller version of Rage himself.

“Uh… No.” Justin had finally managed, glancing over at Joan. “He’s my son.”

And that was where Brian started yelling when Justin recounted the story later that night, trying to rush
though some parts as he poured boiling water out of the pot he was cooking a half assed dinner in. Brian
ranted, throwing his hands up in the air and widening his eyes with every point he made.

“Why didn’t you just tell her that he was your fucking… I don’t know, but you didn’t have to introduce
them!” Brian had shouted, pointing an angry finger at Justin from where he was standing by the oven.

“Look, I agree with you. I didn’t want them to meet either. But, fuck.” Justin said, sending a bordering
desperate look towards Brian to attempt getting his point across. “She knew who he was Brian, as soon
as she saw him.”

…

Brian fell asleep on the couch that night with Elliott sprawled out on top of him, and the end of an old
black and white movie was playing out on the TV screen when Justin discovered the two.

…

The next morning the three of them turned up at the diner for breakfast, and Brian stood outside chain
smoking for fifteen minutes before he bothered to come in.

“What the fuck’s his problem?” Debbie had asked, glancing out the front window where Brian’s
silhouette was framed by rainbow streamers and other daily Liberty Diner decorations. Justin shrugged
and Debbie dropped the topic in favor of turning her attention to her favorite Kinney. “What do you
want for breakfast, baby?”

Elliott had babbled off an elaborate order, and eventually settled for pancakes.

By the time Brian drug himself out of the cold November air, Elliott had whipped cream on every
available surface, and Emmett had made an appearance in their booth.

“Heard about yesterday.” He’d said, all immediate sympathy as Brian sat down beside his kid and took a
minute to bat Emmett’s consoling hand away. “It really is terrible.”

Brian snorted and shrugged and pulled out all the other coping mechanisms he hadn’t used in years as
Justin watched him from the other side of the table with a frown on his face, finally realizing what the
consequence of the freak meeting had been. Elliott hadn’t been successfully scarred for life, and Justin
hadn’t ended up getting into a conversation any more awkward then he’d anticipated. The fact was that
Brian still just couldn’t handle his mother, or the feelings that had come attached to her.

Emmett left after five minutes with a, “See you baby!” and a wave over his narrow shoulder, and Brian
didn’t say much for the rest of the day.

…

“I’m sorry.” Justin had said the next morning, pulling out the tactic he barely ever used while Brian
swore and cringed with a burnt mouth and coffee that was apparently too hot.

“What?” Had been the eloquent reply, as Brian looked up from the counter he had been bent over while
he tried to fill a glass with water. Justin opened the refrigerator door and pulled out a bottle of water,
then handed it over.

“I said, I’m sorry.”

Brian had frowned and twisted the cap from his bottle, leaving the room with a mumbled, “Me too.”
over his shoulder.

…

That afternoon Justin ended up taking Elliott to the Munchers’ house, and was merely three feet into
the front hallway when Lindsay had asked him what was wrong.

Justin’s quick reply had been, “I ended up in an aisle at the grocery store with Joan Kinney.”

As was the anticipated response, Lindsay’s eyes had widened, pale and thin hands covering her pink
mouth as she’d whispered, “Oh shit.”

‘Oh shit’ was just about the only term that could even begin to sum up the previous week, Justin had
decided, while he set Elliott down on the floor to play with Gus’ freakishly sluggish dog. The half and half
breed had been dubbed Calculator three years previous - nobody understood the reasoning behind the
name then, and months ago they’d all given up trying to figure it out.

“So was he…” Lindsay had trailed off, motioning one hand towards Elliott, and Justin had just given her a
simple nod. “Oh. Shit.”

…

Justin climbed into the passenger seat of Brian’s car that night, after repeatedly phoning Kinnetik and
using his something-to-the-boss card to connect to Brian’s direct line enough times to irritate him into
picking Justin up from The Munchers’ house.

“What, were you there all fucking day or something?” Brian had asked, putting his turn signal on as he
glanced at Elliott in the rear view mirror. He was half asleep and leaning against the side of his car seat.

“I just went over to get the roll of film from Ted’s birthday party last week and th-“

Brian snorted, “So did you get a cookie recipe too, and a cup of flour?”

“No, I already have those.” Justin had smirked, never missing a beat in the conversation as Brian
changed lanes. “But I did end up staying later, Gus wanted you to come see him anyways.”

A simple nod from Brian sufficed, and then five minutes of absolute silence passed. The only sound in
the car was the slightly allergy-muffled snores coming from the backseat, and other cars passing them
by.

“My mother left me seven different messages this morning.” Brian said finally, carefully, and Justin
almost got whiplash from turning his head so fast.

“What? What’d she say?”

And for one minute Justin had this little flash of something. Maybe Joan finally had some big kind of-

“The first one Cynthia gave me, she was pissed off she didn’t know I had another son, and she
volunteered herself to make arrangements to get him baptized.” Brian had said carefully, squinting his
eyes for little to no reason. “And by the last one she was pissed off that I hadn’t returned any of her
calls, and she said we should put him up for adoption. To save his soul.”

Justin didn’t breathe properly for a week after that.

The One Where Elliott Meets Joan, Again

When Elliott meets Joan Kinney the second time, it’s on purpose.

Justin hovers all morning while Brian tries to finish off some paperwork and make a pot of coffee at the
same time, and instead of saying anything, Justin fidgets instead, fumbling around with anything he can
reach for the better part of an hour until Brian finally snaps.

“I said you can come if you want.” Brian finally says, voice very fucking calm.

But Justin looks unconvinced as he says, “And my answer was that I think if we went together, Joan
would attack me. Just fucking, like. Attack.” He says, and moves his hands around in a circular motion to
get his ‘fucking, like, attack’ point across. Brian folds his arms across his chest.

“Then stop hovering. You’re driving me infuckingsane.”

Justin squawks, recovers, and replies, “I’m not hovering.”

“What, you just decided to clean the fucking sink while I’m trying to make some coffee?” Brian asks,
raising his eyebrows, and Justin won’t look him in the eyes. “Justin I’ve never seen you clean the sink in
your life. So stop it before I throw you out on your ass.”

Instead of arguing, Justin turns the tap off, and when Brian throws him a pointed look, his excuse is,
“Fucking economically friendly, okay? I’m just saving water.”

For a split second Brian forgets about his mother and smirks.

…

Brian always thought that the apocalypse would come before he’d willingly decide to visit his mother’s
house without the intent to attend a funeral, attempt coming out or fuck a priest. Then again, said
apocalypse had probably already come and gone, he realized, when he ended up with two sons and no
lesbian to take one home.

And yet there he was, shifting back and forth from foot to foot on Joan Kinney’s doorstep, with a
nervous bounce in his knees and a confused kid in his arms.

“Pretty ugly house.” Elliott surveys, eyes studying the exterior of the middle class home Brian grew up
in.

“Hideous.” Brian confirms, and Elliott snickers and lays his head flat against the shoulder he’s resting on,
one arm wrapping around Brian’s neck as the front door creaks open. It’s very haunted house, except
instead of a ghost on the other side, it’s just a witch. “Joan. Hi.”

“Brian.” She leans against the door and her plucked eyebrows move about halfway up her forehead.
Brian smirks and tries not to let his twisting stomach get to him as Elliott looks down at the woman who
should be his grandmother but is truthfully even less than an acquaintance. “What are you doing here?”

“I introduced Jack to Gus before he died.” Brian starts, and his voice is hard as he shifts from one foot to
the other. Elliott perks up at the mention of Gus’ name and he looks over Brian’s left shoulder, watching
the lawn to see if Gus will appear from behind a tree, maybe with Calculator behind him.

“Brian, I won’t submit myself to your antics.” Joan says, moving back so she can shut the door in her
son’s face. Brian’s expression hardens, and he can hear Justin repeating ‘told you, told you’ over and
over in his head. “I know that you’re doing this for my attention. This time you won’t get it.”

“Elliott.” He says, nudging the head off his shoulder, and Elliott looks up with sleepy eyes and tries to
focus in on the gaunt woman in the narrow doorway. Brian can feel his nerves slowly building up into a
breakdown. “Say hello to Joan.”

Joan frowns some more, and all of the lines in her face deepen as Elliott offers her a half assed wave and
says, “I already met you.”

…

“She shut the door in your face?” Michael complains, moving around the checkout counter with a stack
of dusty comic books in his arms. Brian frowns and leans against the counter, trying to pretend that his

best friend doesn’t actually still own a comic book store and reads ninety eight percent of the material
that goes through it.

“Of course she did. You really expected some other kind of reaction? She’s Joan, for fucks sake.” Brian
snaps, then shakes his head when Elliott looks up from where he’s trying to lodge a possibly very
expensive plastic figurine into a too small shelf. The head is close to snapping off when Michael walks
by, reaches down, and takes it. “Fuck me for saying it, but Justin was right. I should’ve just forgot about
it.”

Michael shrugs and listens for the usual sniffles or whines to start from Elliott, but when Brian kneels
down and picks him up, his attention is diverted from the fact that someone just took something off of
him.

“Okay, but seriously.” Mikey says, looking over to where Brian’s standing by the door, and for a second
Brian’s convinced his friend is going to divulge some big enigma to him, but then he realizes it’s Michael.
“Who should I put in the window, Spiderman or Rage?”

…

“Why’s it bothering you so much?” Justin asks that night, after Brian starts to complain about the earlier
encounter with his mother again. “I mean, you’ve never cared what she’s thought of you before.”

“I don’t care now.” Brian states, frowning as he reaches for his last pack of cigarettes. Justin raises his
eyebrows and waits for the rest, but then Brian’s just shrugging and sliding off the kitchen stool to go to
the balcony and feed into his nicotine addiction.

…

Justin is seriously considering committing a quick suicide the next day as he waits on the front stoop of
Brian’s mother’s house, his pulse thumping as he listens to the doorbell ring and echo through the front
hall of the home.

He keeps his eyes trained on the toes of his shoes, and doesn’t miss the sound of the curtain scraping
against the window before silence falls over the entire house and he realizes that as far as Joan Kinney is
concerned, he doesn’t exist.

…

Debbie is carrying three separate plates of cheesecake in one hand when Justin walks into the Diner that
night, holding one of Elliott’s small hands as he takes clumsy toddler steps toward the booth at the far
end of the room. She sees the two of them immediately, and even though Mikey has been filling her in
on the never ending Joan Kinney Saga, she’s still Debbie and she wants a first hand account.

“Alright, Sunshine.” She says, looming over the edge of the table and looking down at it’s two
occupants. Elliott offers her a mouthful of new teeth and Justin barely manages a half smile. “Spill.”

…

The best thing about working at Kinnetik is that Brian is the fucking boss, and he has an assistant who
could technically initiate the shutdown of the entire world if he told her to. The worst thing about
owning Kinnetik is that sooner or later he has to leave because Ted is his fucking accountant, and he can
tell Justin if Brian’s just sitting at his desk doing shit all and pretending to work on an account just so he
doesn’t have to leave his office and face the rest of humanity.

“You fuck.” Cynthia smiles, looking up at Brian as he passes by her desk. He stops walking and glances
down at her with raised eyebrows and a questioning expression. “You said you were bringing that kid of
yours in for me to fuss over this afternoon.”

Brian smirks despite himself, but Cynthia always knew he wasn’t Big Bad Brian Kinney anyways.

“That little shit of mine?” Brian asks, sliding one arm into his expensive jacket, and then the other.
Cynthia leans back against her chair and nods with a grin on her face as she watches Brian fish his car
keys out of his pockets. “If I can get him away from the other twenty thousand hoards of women who
want to fuss over him, maybe.”

…

“So she shuts the fucking door in his face right, and he said that he thinks she was going to open it again,
but then she heard Elliott say that he didn’t want to see the witch anyways.” Justin explains, and he
smirks despite himself while Debbie starts laughing and leans over to pinch Elliott’s cheek. In a fashion
that he’s perfected straight from Brian himself, he immediately squirms away and then offers his best
doe eyed expression up to his pseudo grandma. “Did Michael tell you what she said to Brian after she
met me in the grocery store?”

Debbie shakes her head and Justin frowns and glances down at Elliott.

“I’ll, uh. I’ll tell you later.”

She nods and looks sad as she kisses the top of Justin’s head.

…

Brian walks through the Diner doors exactly eighteen minutes after Debbie delivers Justin and Elliott’s
food, and almost sits down at the front counter to order his usual coffee before he notices the two in
the booth at the very back of the room.

Elliott notices Brian before Justin does, and throws one arm up and exclaims, “Look, pancakes for
dinner!”

“Hey.” Brian smirks as he goes to slide into the booth, but the expression immediately turns into a
frown. “Justin, he has fucking lipstick on his cheek.”

…

“Joan has more authority over him then he’ll admit.” Justin says to Michael the next day, as he helps him
go through boxes full of comic books that need to be sorted out and then priced.

“No kidding.” Michael snorts and then shakes his head. “He’s still piss scared of her, even after all of
these years.”

Justin frowns and hands Michael a copy of the first Rage issue ever, and it’s still wrapped in the original
plastic. Michael squeals and then says, “Now I have four of these!”

…

Brian shuffles around the kitchen, pacing back and forth between the table and the fridge, and then the
oven and the back doors as he listens to the kid’s show on the TV in the next room. The volume is turned
up three notches too loud for the splitting migraine in Brian’s head.

He remembers the fucking night that Elliott had been born, and the day after when he almost had two
consecutive breakdowns. The first had been when he realized he had a son that Linds or Melanie
wouldn’t be taking home, and the second one ended up being when Ted almost dropped the kid. Brian
grimaces at the memory and is glad that Ted is better with numbers than he is with children.

…

“I can’t decide whether he just has family issues, or if he legitimately wants Eli to meet her.” Justin
frowns and nervously tears another strip of paper from the order form he’s been fidgeting with. “That
was a stupid thing to say. Of course he doesn’t.”

“Justin, come on.” Michael says finally, looking up from where he’s trying to construct a cardboard
cutout of JT to put in the front window. “You and I both know that Brian would fucking… I don’t know.

Keep Elliott in a cocoon if it meant that he could make sure Elliott would never have to meet people like
Joan. Gus too.”

Justin nods and frowns and tears the piece of paper again.

…

The next day Brian feels just about as old as Elliott as he sits in the driveway of his mother’s house for
the second time in a week. He chain smokes his way through five cigarettes and then readjusts his rear
view mirror and the space between the seat and the steering wheel. Then he smokes another two
cigarettes and contemplates a joint as his fingers itch towards the gear shift, wanting to just put it in
reverse and get the hell out of there.

He could just leave and go back to Kinnetik, he thinks, actually use his lunch break for something
constructive instead of sitting in his mother’s driveway with the intent to go inside but the knowledge of
knowing that it’ll never happen.

His phone rings thirty five minutes after he arrived, and Brian jerks in surprise at the shrill noise filling
the car before he remembers to reach across and answer it.

“We’re out of Jim Beam.” Justin says as his hello, and Brian exhales slowly and deliberately, and knows
that ‘we’re out of Jim Beam’ is code for ‘I know where your head is and I think it’s time to just let it go
until she drinks herself into a beautifully timed grave.’

“Yeah.” Brian mumbles, and reaches to turn his keys in the ignition. “Yeah, okay.”

The End.

The One Where They Visit New York, Brian Doesn’t Answer His Phone, Justin Doesn’t Like Michael and
Elliott’s Older Than He Usually Is.

Three days after Elliott turns eight years old, Justin starts to look for prospective studio space in the
heart of New York.

“No. No, we just got here. What? No, I can’t hear you, the fucking… Elliott! Put your jacket back on!
What? Wh- No, I can’t, I can’t hear – I’ll call you back when I get out of the airport. Okay. Okay. Yeah.
Okay – later.

Justin manages to hang up just in time to reach out and grab Elliott before he disappears into the
luggage carousel, and just before Brian starts asking him more questions about the flight. Elliott’s
giggling and holding onto the no doubt wickedly expensive designer name suitcase that he’s sitting
beside, and all that Justin can manage is a hand through his own head of hair.

“Hey!” Elliott exclaims, frowning when Justin pulls him off of the rack and sets him back down on the
floor, attempts zipping up the jacket that Elliott’s been trying to pull off all day. Apparently, Elliott loves
to get rained on by mid-September New York weather.

“Remember, Eli.” Justin starts to say, pausing to smooth one hand over the top of Elliott’s head. His hair
is sticking up on end from the static that’s appearing from somewhere, Justin can’t think about where
it’s coming from right now without his head exploding into forty three pieces. “Daddy said not to be a
little shit, and that includes getting back onto the plane via the luggage rack.”

Elliott smiles and nods, shows teeth that make Debbie get him whatever he wants, and reaches his hand
out for Justin to take. Justin nods and exhales, stands up and decides that it probably wasn’t a great idea
to take his kid to buy some professional space anyway, but there’s no way in fuck that he’d leave him
with Brian and Cynthia again. Not after the last time, when Elliott had photocopied his own face damned
near five hundred times while Cynthia ran across the street to get coffee and Brian bitched out the art
intern that was, at the time at least, new.

“I’m starving.” Elliott sighs as they start towards the lobby, his voice melodramatic and bordering on
sounding like Brian’s does. Justin rolls his eyes and carefully leads Elliott out of the drop off and pick up
area by the hand, looks around for some kind of machine that dispenses food saturated with sugar and
fat. He can’t find one, but he knows that if there was one in a five mile radius, Elliott would know about
it anyway. Elliott tugs Justin’s hand, says, “Let’s go back to Grandma Deb’s. I want some brownies.”

Justin pretends to ignore that comment and shakes his head, decides that the best idea would just be to
lift Elliott off of the floor, lanky eight year old body and all, so that’s what he does. It’s the only way to
effectively get him out of the airport, even if he is still complaining about his lack of brownies when they
arrive at the entrance. Justin sighs and gives in, says,

“I’ll tell you what, Eli. I’ll call daddy, and get him to bring some when he comes tonight – but, only if you
stop whining. At least until we get a cab.”

The child carefully considers this deal for about half a minute before he smiles and nods, pats Justin’s
shoulder with the palm of his small hand and smiles, showing crooked teeth with one missing in the
center.

“I want two brownies though.” He says, showing his point by holding up two carefully counted fingers,
fingernails black from getting into the permanent markers in Justin’s Liberty Avenue office. Brian blamed
it on Emmett’s influence, and tried in vain to wash it off for a good forty five minutes. Didn’t work. Elliott
reiterates his point with a, “Two.”

Justin sighs and damns Brian’s influence to hell.

“I’ll get you an entire pan, as long as you don’t cause any havoc today.”

Elliott raises one eyebrow, a move that he’s been tediously perfecting since the age of four, and asks,
“What’s havoc?”

Justin snickers and says, “It’s your middle name.”

…

“So, when was this available again?” Justin asks, looking over the brochure he had been handed when
he was not two steps inside the door. He looks to the completely over the top realtor, her hair pulled so
tight that each morning she must get an instant facelift.

“October first. However if necessary, my client is available to move out by the fifteenth of this month, it
wouldn’t be a problem.”

Nodding, Justin looks back around the space again, surveying the shiny floors and Elliott as he traces one
pale finger over a misty window pane. When he gets bored of that, he starts to make faces in the
reflection that’s shining back at him – first raising both of his eyebrows, then one, then the other before
he growls. Justin shakes his head and absentmindedly looks up at the high beam ceilings.

The location’s perfect – the abandoned warehouse Brian leased for the New York branch of Kinnetik’s
only ten minutes away, and Justin knows that there are some newly restored condos in the next block
over, if the time ever came that they may need to lease one. He taps his fingers against the glossy
brochure, and turns back to look at the realtor, still carefully studying him. Probably wondering what
color number the ‘dye’ in his hair is, if he knows women. Which… technically, well, he doesn’t.

“I just need to make a phone call.” He says, shrugs his shoulders a little and watches as she immediately
nods and excuses herself into the hallway, leaving Justin to his cell phone and Elliott to his own devices.

Justin dials the number to Kinnetik. Waits for the usual five rings to go off on Brian’s desk before he’s
transferred over to Cynthia, who will then transfer Justin back to Brian.

Four rings and then five, followed by an annoyed, “He’s not even in a meeting. I’m going to shove my
foot up his ass if he doesn’t start picking up.”

Laugher echoes through the near empty space Justin’s standing in as he listens to Cynthia huff, replies to
her comment with a perfectly timed, “I wouldn’t do that – he might like it, and you’d never get rid of
him, then.”

Cynthia laughs and Justin hears her sipping either coffee or water, whatever new diet she’s on this
week, before the line gets cut off, and he’s finally transferred over to Brian’s office.

“I’ll kill you with my bare hands if you don’t have that font ready to use.” Brian greets, voice hard and
fists probably clenched. Justin rolls his eyes but before he can continue he’s distracted, hurries to jog
over to Elliott just in time to pull him from the window before the child can complete the half drawn
cartoon version of the realtor in the fogged up glass.

“Nice to talk to you too, darling.” He finally snorts, shaking his head and narrowing his eyes at the top of
Elliott’s. As soon as the words leave the blond’s mouth, though, Elliot looks up at him with raised
eyebrows. Justin makes another face down at Elliott, one that says ‘don’t worry, I’m just kidding’ this
time, before the kid giggles and reaches up for the phone so he can talk to Brian himself. “Hold on, Eli.”

“And here I thought that I was rid of you for an entire day.” Brian drawls, and Justin hears him shuffling
papers around in the background – probably for no reason other than so Justin can hear him shuffling
papers around in the background.

“No suck luck, old man.” Justin says. Reaches down so he can pry Elliott’s fingers away from where he’s
started trying to untie Justin’s shoelaces. “But hey listen, I did find a pretty nice place. Great location,
too. I want you to come see it.”

“Was the plane ticket I bought for five o’clock tonight invisible, or something? Is that how they’re
making them these days? I’ll fuckin’ sue.” Justin knows Brian’s rolling his eyes back in the Pitts, even if
there’s no one in the room to see the motion.

“Fuck you.” Elliott doesn’t blink twice when Justin says that. “I’m just saying, I want you to come and see
it. It’s kind of close to Kinnetik.”

This is where Brian starts to complain some more about how he doesn’t want to work beside where
Justin is all day, but Justin knows that he’s bullshitting something wicked, so he hands the phone off to
Elliott without a second thought, who immediately goes into some dramatic recount of the taxi ride
over. The realtor comes back in and babbles to Justin the same way Elliott is babbling to his father.

…

“Where are we going?” Elliott asks as he ties and then undoes the drawstring on his little black hoodie,
his blue eyes trained on the window that’s being pelted by sheets of rain. The cab driver watches his two
passengers from the front seat, his brown eyes reflecting in the rear view mirror, flashing whenever they
pass by a light.

“The hotel.” Justin replies without thinking, on his way to comatose as he tries to work the text
messaging on his cell. Brian refuses to answer that particular kind of communication, and Justin knows

that even if he were stranded on an island and his only form of communication was a text message,
Brian would never get around to rescuing him cause he’d be too busy bitching about having to squint
and read the tiny words. So anyway, the only person that Justin ever really text messages is Mikey, and
that doesn’t even count because it isn’t even fun. Mikey doesn’t know how to turn the caps lock off if he
accidentally hits it, so usually Justin ends up with a message something like, ‘those new stORY BOARDS R
DUE NEXT WEEK, SO U BETTER GET THEM TO ME OR I MIGHT HAVE TO SHOOT YOU HAHAH.’

After all these years Justin still doesn’t like Mikey that much.

“When are we gonna go home?” Elliott asks, his fiftieth question of the night, as he leans back against
his seat and starts to drum his hands on his lap, one palm on each knee. Justin can feel the driver
starting to get aggravated, but honestly can’t find himself to care. At least Elliott’s not trying to climb out
the window, he figures.

“Tomorrow afternoon. We have to go back to that place we looked at this morning tomorrow morning.”
Justin explains. “I want to see if Daddy likes it too.”

Elliott nods and goes back to his tapping, so Justin goes back to carefully typing out, ‘I left the story
boards at the store, I put them right in your fuckin hands. If you lost them again, Michael I swear to god,
I quit. And the caps button, its right beside the fuckin A. You can’t miss it.’

…

Elliott’s hitting numerous buttons on the television remote at the same time when Justin hears a key
card in the door, glances at his watch and realizes that its already seven at night.

Suddenly the volume on the TV increases at least ten notches in two seconds flat, and Justin jerks,
almost drops the bottle of water he’s holding, and then tries not to laugh as Elliott frantically tries to hit
the power button, quite obviously spooked from the sudden turn of events.

“I’m about to pass the fuck out.” Brian complains, closes the door behind him and then drops his carry
on bag, not one pace inside of the room. Elliott looks up from the remote just as the lock is clicking and
grins, eyes still wider than usual from the earlier event of the blaring TV.

Says, “Daddy promised you’d bring me some brownies.”

Brian rolls his eyes and tosses his key card onto the nearest table, kicks his too expensive to be kicked
shoes off, and starts to half shrug out of the jacket that he’s wearing. It’s obvious that he left Kinnetik
and went straight to the airport just from his attire, and it’s also obvious that Elliott starts pouting as
soon as he realizes that Brian’s ignoring him.

“I did promise him.” Justin supplies from his position on the bed, even though most of his concentration
is on the answering machine messages that he’s checking from their house in the Pitts. One’s from Deb
reminding Brian about the brownies, one’s from his mother giving him a phone number for a back up
realtor, and two are from Mikey. Justin doesn’t really listen to those with too much intent.

Disappearing into the bathroom, Brian calls over his shoulder. “They’re in the front zipper, Eli. But they
may or may not be smashed into one hundred pieces.”

…

Elliott falls asleep in the corner of the couch, chocolate smeared over his face and hands, head at an
awkward angle against the armrest with the TV still on in front of him. They take the opportunity to fuck
in the shower – Brian doesn’t slip once, and Justin doesn’t get soap in any unmentionable places.

…

“Look at the windows. Look how fucking high they are.” Justin says, motions to the twelve foot high
windows and the crappy weather that they’re currently showcasing. Brian shifts Elliott up higher on his

hip and shrugs with one shoulder. Sends a glance over at the realtor who’s pretending that she isn’t
listening to their conversation over in the corner, writing some fucking thing or another in her book.
Justin’s still talking, saying, “I can use the bottom floor for a showroom – maybe even open it up to the
public.”

Brian raises his eyebrows but nods anyway, bounces both of his shoulders when Elliott lays his head
down on one, the child laughing when his ear hits the damp fabric of Brian’s winter jacket, which is
probably worth more than most people’s monthly salary.

“Whatever you want.” Brian finally concedes, and Justin rolls his eyes. Knows that he’s got Brian
wrapped around any one of his fingers, just as much as Elliott does. Brian turns around and looks over at
the realtor, who suddenly looks up at him with a classic deer in the headlights look on her face. Brian
says, “But before we get it, I want to bring in a professional to check it over. To make sure there isn’t
anything wrong with it.”

She nods immediately, and Justin smirks. Winks at Elliott, who’s grinning into the fabric of the jacket as
Brian turns around to study the chipped red brick wall.

…

They get back to the Pitts, and Mikey appears on their doorstep exactly three hours after their plane has
landed, hands a stack of story boards over to Justin and explains that, “I found these stuffed behind the
cash register. I have the new versions, but these are the old ones that you ended up redrawing. You
know, thought you might like to have them.”

Justin grinds his teeth in the back and tries his damndest not to just murder Michael, because Debbie
might never forgive him, and would most likely pull out of the ‘free babysitting whenever you want’ deal
that they’ve had with her since Elliott was two and a half days old. And that’s not something Justin’s
about to risk.

From somewhere in the house, Justin and Mikey hear Elliott’s screams and then Brian’s laughter, and
Justin presses a hand to his forehead. Tries to think back to when Elliott did nothing other than sleep,
and Brian just complained a lot. Looks over at Mikey, who’s pointing our some fucking thing in each

panel – either Rage’s head is too flat on one side or some other ridiculous ‘flaw’, but Justin isn’t really
listening anyway so technically it doesn’t count.

He smirks and closes the door in Mikey’s face, proceeds to ignore the squawking that comes from the
front stoop, and tells Brian that it’s nothing when he asks what the fuck that noise is. Watches as Brian
loses interest in the conversation before it really even starts, and then resumes his chasing Elliott
around the kitchen – a black spider the kid discovered under the kitchen sink crawling over one of his
hands.

The One With Justin's Dad

Elliott has four first birthdays.

The premiere event is held in the kitchen, the second transpires at Deb’s, and the third at the
Munchers’. Finally the fourth, and hopefully last, is held in Mother Taylor’s brand new townhouse –
which, Brian thinks, is appropriately located three blocks Northwest of a retirement home.

“I’ve already spent the last five days washing icing out of his hair.” Justin complains, a scowl on his face
and arms crossed over his chest as he watches Elliott demolish a piece of cake, all one-year-old
coordination full of palms and tiny fingers.

Brian snorts and rolls his eyes, snickering a little at the blatantly miserable tone that oozes from Justin’s
voice. He reaches across the short distance that separates him from Elliott’s high chair to smear the
white icing from the baby’s cheek with his thumb. It doesn’t work, the action only fuels the icing in
smudging further into Elliott’s skin and also ends up all over Brian’s hand as well.

“I just can’t believe that he’s a year old already.” Jennifer breathes, the stereotypical grandmother, as
she sips at her coffee, a mountain of birthday presents still perfectly wrapped and ready to rip apart
sitting to her right. Justin’s pretty sure that she started buying presents the day Elliott was born, and has
now taken to distributing them as each holiday passes.

By the time Elliott’s sixth birthday comes around, he’s going to have three truckloads of gifts in the one
day thanks to the five years available for Jennifer to birthday shop in, Justin decides.

“That makes two of us.” Brian snorts, proceeds to ignore the way that Justin rolls his eyes as he stands
up, moving over to pick his kid out of the high chair.

Justin holds Elliott the way Emmett holds a football – at least a foot away from his chest – so he doesn’t
end up covered in icing, too.

…

Jennifer disappears to get what Justin not so secretly suspects is the second round of birthday presents
from her bedroom, leaving the other three in the living room with their own devices for distraction.

Brian falls into the couch already half passed out, a newly washed and half asleep Elliott against his
chest, so Justin attempts cleaning up the wrapping paper. Wrapping paper which, he thinks, probably
victimized at least thirty five trees, just from the sheer volume of the stuff.

“You know, you could help me.” Justin half-snickers, hitting Brian’s shoulder as he passes by, already on-
route to a pile of shiny paper covered in assorted dinosaurs and trucks.

Brian snorts and says, “Not likely.”

…

After spending a suspicious fifteen minutes upstairs, Jennifer parades down with another armful of
presents, all freshly wrapped and ready to be shred to pieces.

The front doorbell rings when she’s half way down the steps, so around the time that Justin’s starting to
debate getting off of the couch to answer the chimes, she drops the presents into a heap on the coffee
table and then hurries through to the hallway.

Justin forfeits attempting to climb out of the couch when Jennifer’s hand touches the doorknob, and
relaxes back into his previous position instead, body wedged between Brian and the armrest. He
attempts to pick out the knot starting to form in Elliott’s hair, already caked with icing and a ridiculous
variety of bits of food from his dinner.

“What are you doing here?” Is the first thing that the two of them hear Jennifer say, her words drifting
down the newly painted front hall, voice soft like Justin remembers it being when he was a teenager and
she’d try to say something so he couldn’t hear it. Before either of them hear the guest reply, she pokes
her head back around the door frame and into the living room long enough to force a smile and say, “I’ll
be back in a minute, guys. I just need to step outside for a moment.”

Justin nods, albeit a little vacantly, his hand relaxing on the top of Elliott’s back.

When he looks over at Brian, he finds that they have near identical expressions – both of their eyebrows
raised.

“Ten bucks says it’s some old dude looking for a fuck.” Brian laughs, horrific giggles – fucking giggles -
starting to edge his voice away, and he narrowly escapes an elbow to the stomach, but that’s only
because Justin’s arm is too wedged into the couch end to move properly.

“Fuck off.” He says, choosing a well timed assault as a retort, but before he finishes the two words, his
mouth drops open in that special kind of way as he strains to listen to what’s transpiring on the other
side of the door.

Brian doesn’t say another word, mainly out of curiosity that he’ll later deny, and the room falls silent
until the only sound filling it is Elliott murmuring and trying to stick his hand into Brian’s hair, which
Brian repeatedly pulls out with a soft ‘stop.’

Just when Brian thinks Justin’s finally given up on his stealth spy game, he realizes the blond is actually
just trying to struggle out of the couch and hand the baby over to Brian at the same time.

“What are you going to do, spy on your fucking mother?” Brian hisses. Takes Elliott before Justin simply
drops the kid into Brian’s lap, too preoccupied with the door to think of anything else. The blond
narrows his eyes, then hurries across the living room floor, peeking from behind the curtains of the
window at the opposite side of the area to where Brian is sitting.

He can only kind of make out the scene playing out on the front stoop outside the window, but he can
hear the conversation perfectly.

“No way.” Justin whispers, eyes suddenly wide as he watches the event taking place outside the house.
At the tone of Justin’s voice, Brian looks up from Elliott and raises his eyebrows. “No fucking way!”

It’s an exact three second wait before Brian gets irritated and hisses, “What?”

Justin’s already moving back across the floor, body rigid and eyes huge, mouth dropped open more than
it was before as he slaps Brian’s shoulder with a stiff hand and stage whispers, “It’s my fucking dad!”

“Your dad?” Brian asks, confirming as his eyebrows climb steadily up and into his hairline. “Your dad as
in Craig Taylor?”

“Yes!” Justin exclaims, voice starting to screech and Brian counts down the seconds until a dual queen
out between the both of them. As soon as the single word echoes and bounces off of the minimally
decorated walls, Justin quickly covers his mouth with both hands. Brian starts to laugh, and it’s nervous,
Justin knows, but he tries to get up off of the couch with a squirmy baby in his grip anyways. Justin
lowers his voice back down into a soft whisper long enough to murmur, “Fuck.”

“Well what the hell am I’m supposed to do?” Brian asks, anger starting to edge into the corners of his
voice. Christ, the last thing that Craig knew was that Justin wasn’t even with Brian anymore, hadn’t been
for a few months and was seeing some musician that performed on street corners every night.

The last thing that Craig would ever expect – and Brian knows, he knows this – is to see said son (only
son, definitely not straight son) with aforementioned pedophile (older man, much older man, also
definitely not straight) with a child of their own.

Shit.

“How the fuck should I know?” Justin’s suddenly hissing as he runs back to the window so he can look
through it once more. “Fuck. Fuck! They’re coming in – she’s inviting him in!”

Brian groans and drops back down into the couch, body going slack as his head hits the light green
cushions. As he closes his eyes all he can think is, Happy Birthday, Elliott.

“Put him in the closet or something!” Justin’s voice is transforming rapidly, between hisses and whispers
and murmurs and now a high screech. When Brian opens his eyes, he realizes that Justin is already
standing in front of him, and is dangerously close to hitting some appendage on his slightly older, still
fucking perfect, goddamnit body. “Give him to me, I’ll take him upstairs and-“

“And leave me with the fucking Antichrist?” Brian snorts. “Not likely-“

Justin presses his palms to his forehead and exhales slowly, trying to breathe through the sheer panic
starting to race through his veins. He tries a different approach, “Look, he’s going to completely freak
out if he sees him and-“

“Justin?”

At the sound of his name, both Brian and the aforementioned blond look up when they hear Jen’s voice
drifting through the front door and into the living room. Justin forces a smile when he sees how rattled
his mother looks.

She can only manage a half-shrug as she starts to speak softly, her voice hurried, “I didn’t know he was
going to stop by tonight, he came to get-“

It’s at about this point when the entire scenario half turns to shit and half to a dramatic soap opera as
Craig rounds the corner from the front hall and into the living room, and after a perfectly timed double
take, asks, “Justin? What are you doing here?”

Justin figures Craig hasn’t seen the baby yet, judging merely by the tone of his voice, of course. He’s not
yelling yet. Which is actually a surprise, considering the Kinney sitting right in front of him.

“Fuck.” Justin whines, dropping down into the too comfortable couch cushions. His body lands beside
Brian’s, who’s still alternating between hiding a smirk and trying to get Elliott’s small hand away from
the top of his head. Justin’s eyes move from the floor his feet are resting on, to in front of him, then
across the room until they’re traveling up his father’s body and then he’s staring Craig in the face, eyes
already blazing. All Justin can manage is a weak, “Hey. Dad.”

“Da!” Elliott squeals, sharp voice piercing through the tense air, and all that Jennifer can do is stand to
the side and cover her face with her hands. Elliott slaps his palm flat against the side of Brian’s face and
gets a snicker in reply, then Brian’s grabbing the tiny baby hand with two fingers, letting Elliott’s entire
fist tighten around his thumb.

“Craig, I really think…” Jennifer starts to say, as she motions back towards the door with one hand. It’s
already too late though – Craig knows. And they’re all aware of the revelation because he stands there,
bottom lip dropped as he stares at Elliott with too-wide eyes. Jennifer sighs and cracks before she
thought she would, drops her hands to her sides and motions to the two sitting on the couch. A fragile
hand is running through her hair when she asks, “I need to talk to your father, Justin, would you two
mind waiting upstairs?”

Justin nods immediately, thankful that suddenly he has an instant escape.

He reaches over and picks Elliott up off of Brian’s chest, not once looking his father in the eye as he
hurries across he living room floor and up the adjoining set of stairs.

Even though Justin’s already reached the first landing, Brian’s slowly climbs out of the couch and then
stalks across the hardwood with a smirk firmly in place. Then he disappears up the stairs, after Justin
and Elliott.

Before Brian’s even in the upstairs hallway, he hears Craig start to yell.

“Where the fuck are you?” Brian calls, voice snappier than intended as he pokes his head in the first
door he comes by. It’s Jennifer’s home office, but it’s also empty. The second door he opens is a linen
closet, and the third a bathroom.

Justin’s balanced on the side of the porcelain tub while Elliott sits on the floor in-front of him, banging a
drawer underneath the sink open and then closed. The blond looks up as Brian closes the door behind
him, which effectively drowns out the twelfth grade flashback that Justin gets from hearing his parents
fighting downstairs.

“I never wanted him to have to meet Craig.” Justin sighs, watching as Elliott manages to pull a clean
towel from the cupboard before he slams it closed again. Brian sits down on the edge of the ancient-
but-recently-restored tub, eyes trained to watch the baby crawling across the floor. “At least not yet.
And definitely not on his first birthday. Fuck. He’s going to need counseling when he’s ten.”

Bordering full queen out mode, Justin drops his head into his hands and sighs. Closes his eyes, and
ignores the way that Elliott tries to pull on the hem of his pants.

A frown and then Brian’s arm is sliding around Justin’s shoulders, leaning the two bodies together as he
whispers in his ear, “Forget it. It doesn’t matter. He won’t even remember this.”

Justin shakes his head again and sniffs, fucking allergies, and that’s when they hear the front door slam
closed.

The entire house rattles and Elliott freezes for a second, one palm pressed against the tiled floor. Brian
glances over at the bathroom door with raised eyebrows, sighs and picks Elliott up off of the tile when
he starts to pull at Brian’s legs, terrified of the sudden bang.

“Sounds like he left.” Brian whispers, catching Elliott’s hand before it manages to twist itself around the
neck of Brian’s shirt. Elliott starts to ramble in baby-speak, his voice already loud and angry, a miniature
frustrated Brian at only a year old.

Justin mumbles, “Sounds like it.”

…

Elliott’s birthday is October 26th, and after they leave Jennifer’s house on the night of his fourth first
birthday party, they don’t see Craig again for exactly two years and two days.

Cynthia hurries into Brian’s office on the morning of Elliott’s third birthday, her eyebrows angled right
up into her hairline, pink painted mouth hanging halfway open.

“There’s someone here to see you.” She breathes, fingers clutching at the clipboard in her hand,
Kinnetik logo printed across the back. “He’s waiting in the lobby.” His concentration doesn’t falter from
the document he’s running over despite Cynthia’s repeated attempts to tear him away from it. “No,
seriously. Brian.” She leans over his desk and taps the piece of paper in his hand, waits until he glances
up before she bothers to continue at all. “I think it’s Justin’s father, but he won’t give me a first name.”

A groan and Brian covers both of his eyes with one hand, leaning back in his chair as he desperately tries
not to think about the upcoming showdown with the devil that he’s two conference rooms away from
having to endure.

“What the fuck does he want?” He finally asks, voice laced with a moan as he drops the hand from his
face and glares over at Cynthia. She shakes her head much too solemnly for an assistant who sneaks
through his desk drawers after hours.

She shrugs and reiterates, “I have no idea. All he said was that he wanted to see you. Now.”

Brian pinches the bridge of his nose immediately.

Sighs, “Send him in.”

…

“He came to your fucking office?” Justin asks, bewildered with eyes wide as he watches Brian from
where he’s standing, paintbrush in one hand as the other worries through his hair.

Brian nods and leans against the doorframe of the very in-house, very expensive studio, and crosses his
arms over his chest.

“I don’t even know what the fuck he did it for, either.” He grimaces, pausing to interrupt that expression
with a frown before he pushes away from the door, starts over to where Justin’s standing in front of a
half empty canvas. He wraps his arms around Justin’s middle and chooses to ignore the streak of red
paint that he feels suddenly dripping down his neck. “He just came in and had his usual breeder queen
out, like the last time we saw him was yesterday and we were just continuing the conversation we never
had.”

Gaping, Justin asks, “Seriously?”

“I’m a fuckin’ ad-man, but I couldn’t make this up if I tried.” Brian promises, voice solemn and eyes wide.
Justin tries not to smile. “After he finished yelling and I finished calling security, he said he didn’t believe
it, then saw the picture on my desk and had another queen out.”

A raised eyebrow and Justin can’t help but, “Are you sure you didn’t spend the better part of your day
submerged in a cheesy dramedy?”

“He stopped being a princess long enough to ask how old Eli is.” Brian deadpans.

Frowning, Justin drops his paintbrush into the murky glass of water that they’re both standing beside,
tightens the wet red grip that he has around Brian’s torso. He can’t help the nervous breath of laughter
that comes out of him as he finally says, “That doesn’t even make sense.”

Brian snorts so Justin’s pretty sure he agrees, is definite about the idea when he bends enough to suck
down the side of the pale neck, and it’s a good choice since it’s the side that has the lesser amount of
paint on it. Justin laughs and tries to duck down, but Brian’s got him too tight.

He presses his fingers into Justin’s sides, and hopes that Justin doesn’t go senile in his old age like Craig
Taylor did.

The Ten

Justin’s ten year high school reunion ends up falling on a Friday night – or so the invitation reads.

It sits, untouched, in the front hall of their house for two weeks before Brian brings it up. When he
finally does, it’s executed carefully. Brian isn’t exactly the type of person to ever consider walking on
glass for certain situations per say, but if there were ever a shattered pane to sink his feet into, it’s
presented when he slides the topic into a conversation that includes the ever popular topic of the next
Collector’s Edition of Rage, and how the new cook at Foody Goody makes the noodles too greasy with
what Brian suspects is also way too much MSG.

“I’m not going.” Is what Justin says. Shakes his head, and stands up from the table. There’s this half a
second long snap-click-flash for Brian, and it’s back to Pride of all fucking things. He sees an eighteen
year old version of Justin standing in front of him, saying the same thing with an all too familiar
wounded expression on his face. Justin hasn’t been wounded for a long time.

They get into a full blown argument by the next night, just because Brian tells him that he should go, just
to show all of the breeder assholes that he’s fine, he’s still fine and they’re still losing because Justin’s
fucking fantastic, never been better. Justin throws a moderately expensive vase from across the room,
and Brian sits in the backyard all night and smokes an entire pack of cigarettes. When he comes back
into the house smelling like nicotine and anger, Justin bitches him out for that too. Tells him that if he
doesn’t stop, he’s going to get cancer of the fucking brain because of all the chemicals that he still
inhales.

Brian makes a return with a sarcastic remark and then sleeps on the couch for the night, tossing and
turning until it’s five thirty in the morning, and in-between bouts of silent complaining, there’s a low
muttering that drifts through the lower level of the house – something about how he knew he should’ve
spent the extra five thousand for a matching leather recliner.

It’s only a mere two days later when Brian gets a voicemail while he’s in the middle of a meeting on 5th
Avenue. Typical daily routine, lunch with some asshole who wants a better image for the ugly musician
he’s marketing, and the way that Justin still sounds completely aggravated makes Brian cover a snort
with a cough as he listens to the blond snap, “I got a hold of Cynthia before lunch, and she’s going to
book a flight for Thursday morning. Believe it or not, some asshole told Michael about a certain event of
which I shall not name, who then told Debbie, who proceeded to phone me just to ream me out and
then offer her foldout couch for the night. Brian, I swear to fucking God. If I kill a sixty year old woman, I
won’t have any regrets.”

They’re at Pittsburgh International Airport by noon Thursday, both of them more than slightly
disoriented just because it’s a lot harder to find a taxi in the Pitts than it is in New York – go figure. In the
end, Brian gets pissed off and phones Ted’s assistant at Kinnetik, gets her to send over one of the
company cars to pick them up, and only gets into a minor argument when she lets it slip that the Coupes
Brian remembers approving months ago haven’t been put into rotation yet – just because the logos on
the back fucking windows haven’t been finalized.

Justin stands on the sidewalk outside the airport terminal and shifts from foot to foot. Fingers the
handle of the piece of walk on luggage he’s still holding as Brian silently fumes beside him, ends up
breaking his line of quiet muttering with an outraged, “If those assholes come with a Volvo, I’m not
getting in it!”

Justin decides that nothing ever changes in Pittsburgh, in a freakish land of no time way. Debbie’s house
is still covered in leftover seventies burnt oranges and golden yellows, and the only thing that Justin
knows for sure is different is the dishtowel thrown over the rack on the oven door. She still breaks
exactly two of Brian’s ribs and crushes Justin’s body in general when she gives each of them a hug, and
in-between Brian’s threats of leaving for a two thousand dollar a night hotel and Debbie’s offer for some
freshly baked cherry pie, Justin sits on the marigold yellow couch in the living room. Inhales the warm air
through his nose and exhales through his mouth, feels like he’s seventeen again and nervous, debating
going to Babylon just to find Brian and ask him about the prom.

After that, the afternoon ends up going by pretty quickly. Brian disappears to inspect Kinnetik, Michael
comes over – even if he was just in New York with Hunter only three weeks previous for an exclusive
screening of Rage: The Prequel – and drives Justin crazy because he’s morphed into the male version of
Debbie over the last five years, and Justin can’t escape his nattering until he has to answer his cell

phone, which is vibrating it’s way across the faded green counter. Ted immediately begins to beg Justin
to either send him a shotgun or send ‘Bri’ back out of state.

By the time Debbie’s starting to set plates full of garlic chicken and rice around the kitchen table, Justin’s
ready to commit a slow suicide. He wonders If the reunion would be a dramatic enough setting to do it
in, a nice backdrop to the final moments of his life.

“Man. I just can’t believe you’re actually going.” Michael breathes, in-between picking over his chicken
(somehow, turning forty was harder on Michael than it was on Brian) and swallowing mouthfuls of
water. “I mean, Christ. You were almost killed. Why would you want to relive that?”

“Thank you, Michael. I believe we all remember.” Brian snaps, and the smile on his face is forced as
Justin reaches for another piece of bread, adds it to the side of his plate. Michael shrugs and starts to
add something else, but the glare on Debbie’s face and the uncomfortable expression on Ben’s stops
him.

After dinner, Debbie gets some extra blankets out of the hall closet and then proceeds to start an in-
depth explanation about how Michael’s bedroom took the brunt of her redecorating phase a few years
ago. Apparently it’s now primarily used as a sewing room, even if it doesn’t contain anything to do with
the hobby – with the exception of the plastic bag full of yarn samples that sit in-between the life sized
terrier sculpture and knock off painting of Mona Lisa, of course. When she gives them her official tour,
Brian almost has two consecutive heart attacks when he sees the fake plastic rosebuds glue-gunned in
lines down the wall.

So nightmares consisting of hideous crafts aside, they miraculously sleep on the pull-out sofa bed that
night. Brian bounces back and forth between complaining about the fact that they’re sleeping on
Debbie’s sofa in the first place, and the fact that they can’t properly fuck because of it. And for one
second he mutters about how the metal bars and uneven springs hurt his back, but that complaint is
quickly silenced when Justin cracks an old man joke.

All of Friday morning, Justin wanders around the floor level of Deb’s house to an aggravating extent
while pretending not to hear Deb and Detective Horvath fucking upstairs. Brian rolls out of bed and
shuffles to the bathroom, and when he proceeds to shuffle back not ten minutes later, the bed is
already folded back up and Justin’s completely dressed and making coffee at the kitchen counter. Brian
shakes his head, blinks a few times, and then disappears upstairs to seek refuge in the shower.

There’s a moment in the middle of the afternoon where Justin decides to just fuck it and go back home
instead – because honestly, he doesn’t really care what his ex-classmates think about him anymore.
There’s no way that at least half of them haven’t already seen the interview he and Michael did on Larry
King when he had the Rage special anyway, and if they really wanted to know why that Taylor kid was
always so quiet through homeroom, he had given his life story then. Fuck, not to mention that the
portion of business graduates would know that he’s the one that’s living with one of the greatest
success stories to come out of the Pitts, fag or not.

But then he blinks and remembers the bat and the gimp hand and every year that’s followed since.

…

Brian gets his fucking Coupe – sans the Kinnetik logo – after he bitches Theodore out for exactly eight
and a half minutes. While Jennifer’s in the middle of nattering to Justin on the phone from her vacation
in Malibu or wherever the fuck retired women her age go for vacation, Brian gets dressed in his most
expensive and fabulous attire, and in the process, somehow gets himself wrapped up in Deb’s bright
pink and blue shower curtain.

The entire time he injects wickedly expensive product into his hair, he eyes the ceramic owl that’s
perched above the toilet on a rickety old shelf, and decides that he’s more delighted than he thought he
was that they’re getting a flight back to New York first thing in the morning.

They leave in a flurry of chattering from Deb and are you sure’s from Michael, who ends up stopping by
a suspicious five minutes before they leave with the excuse of dropping off a casserole dish he borrowed
from Deb a mere six months ago. Justin pulls Brian out the front door before he makes another Stepford
Fags crack, and shoves him down the sidewalk to get him on route to the driveway. The Novotonys
stand in the doorway as The TaylorKinneys pull out of the driveway, and Deb watches with careful eyes
as Brian starts to explain something in a flurry of one hand dramatics and a lot of lip movement. She
remembers a night that started as the complete opposite of this, and ended with a cliff hanger that
none of them had expected. And it was only ten years ago.

The fifteen minute drive between Debbie’s and the school is a lot shorter than Justin expected and
remembered, and before he knows it, Brian’s handing the car over to a valet worker with his keys and a
wicked threat that includes balls and future children. Justin hopes that the employee doesn’t sue for
verbal harassment, and pretends not to notice the way Brian still gets eye-fucked by every man, and
even if Brian refuses to admit it, every woman that he walks by.

…

Two hours later, and the entire night has been bordering meticulous at the most. The food is disgusting
and every item has a weird crust on it, everyone Justin ever remembers knowing has already popped
out one or two kids, and if he has to suffer through one more phony conversation, he’s going to take a
punch to the balls over the ‘I really love that new piece you just finished, I saw it in the arts section of
the newspaper, they did a write up on you and your success. You know I always knew you were going to
be big, even though I only knew you through Kelly, who knew Brad who had English with you. Brad
Hamilton, you remember him?’

Brian lets the gratuitous sexual innuendoes slide into casual conversations all night, and hits on Daphne
for old times sake when they bump into her outside the bathrooms. She wraps her arms around Justin
and hugs him for exactly three and a half hours, then punches him in the stomach when she remembers
he didn’t let her know that he was going to come. She introduces them both to her newest male
conquest – and who ever thought that Daphne would end up being the female version of pre-Justin
Brian Kinney – some Australian model that she met in the produce section at a grocery store.

They make their way through formulated conversations and introductions to Brian Kinney, and yes
Kinnetik is the company behind those cereal bars and dietary supplements that you love so much. Hobbs
doesn’t even show up, and Justin hears one of his old football buddies telling another some drivel about
how Hobbs’ second wife’s mother died in a car accident, and they had to fly to Vermont for the funeral.
For once, Justin couldn’t care less.

“Christ, who ever thought an event such as this would be so dismal. I was hoping for dramatics.” Brian
says, slides one arm around Justin’s still too narrow shoulders and tips his glass of not-expensive-
enough-wine towards a group of people, all talking and laughing and throwing their hands wildly into
the air as they cover their mouths and reminisce memories that aren’t worth anything. “It’s fucking
boring.”

Justin snickers and nods, decides that the most interesting thing about the entire night is how Brian’s
got his hair parted a little differently than it usually is. He ignores the way Brian never lets go of his
shoulder or his elbow or his hip, and figures that if valet has the car in an underground parking lot,
they’ll just walk back to Debbie’s. The fresh air wouldn’t kill him, but the memories might.

“I can’t believe we skipped a night of fucking for this.” Justin sighs, putting a melodramatic spin on his
voice as he leans into Brian’s side a little bit more, forces another mostly fake smile at some woman in a
red dress as she passes them by. Justin only vaguely recalls her from biology class, he thinks she’s the
one who refused to dissect the frog – the token humanitarian at only sixteen.

“How little you know. The night’s still young.”

Justin smiles and reaches up, wraps his arm around Brian’s neck, and he has to push himself up on the
very tips of his toes to properly do it, but he manages to snicker, “It’s the only thing that is.”

In-between a remark that is all too familiar about a certain upcoming three-oh and how Sunshine’s ass
will never fail or succumb to gravity, Brian grabs the side of Justin’s jaw in his finger tips and slides his
tongue into his mouth. Pretends that the people standing and gaping with their mouths wide open
aren’t still there, all these fucking years later.

…

They get back to New York the next day, and both decide that the entire ordeal was tedious at best. And
it was tedious – Brian had expected more bats, and Justin had been afraid that it was exactly what
would happen. But he only had to awkwardly side-step the question once, because it turns out that
getting moderately famous outdoes a being victim to a hate crime. And there was only one flashback to
the night that started it all but finished it too, but by then they were already on the sidewalk outside. All
Justin had to do was send one glance at Brian before he stopped complaining about the shit parking job
that valet did, and wrapped Justin up in his arms instead.

“I told you that you were being a drama princess.” Brian says, after completely queening out about the
cricks in his back, no thanks to sleeping an entire two nights on Deb’s decrepit fold out mattress. He
picks his cup of coffee up from the counter, and Justin rolls his eyes. Continues to shuffle through the
gargantuan pile of mail that he passed up on the day before.

Maybe he’ll start worrying about his twenty year high school reunion ten years too early, and fantasize
about the day where he kicks in the double doors of the old hellhole and stands on the wobbly tables in
the library. Points his fingers at the prom kings and drama queens and gives his final fuck you. He
snickers a little at the thought – the King of Babylon back for his revenge, it’s what cheesy teen
dramedies are made of. Brian raises his eyebrows from his position across the kitchen, but he doesn’t
bother asking why Justin looks like he just finished pulling off the heist of the century.

END