It comes back with a vengeance unlike anything we ever expected. Even though we'd long ago stopped not expecting it. But it's still a surprise even when it isn't, you know? The third time, he got all mystical on me and drunkenly declared three to be the perfect number. The infinity. The completion. Then he laughed dryly and puked in the third stall on the right, a generically painted gray toilet door hanging open behind him. He was beyond trying to hide it at that point.

Brian is stoic, as he always is, on the outside. But inside I know he is so much more of a mess than I am, and I'm fucking falling apart. But here he is, with  phrases like metastasis, basal ganglia involvement, inoperable, glioblastoma, three months still echoing in his ears, and he is holding me. He cradles me and rocks me and whispers in my ear. "Well, Sunshine, at least now we don't have to count to five."

Then he grips me tighter while I sob.

::::

"You get it?"

"Yeah," I say and place the small parcel on the counter. "I got it."

"Good... That's good," he says with a nod, never turning his eyes from the window. It's always been a place of contemplation for him, a place where he could, perhaps, look into the future. Into the past. Into his soul.

I wondered what he sees there now.

We'd moved back to Pittsburgh a little over two years ago when mom was diagnosed. Yet one more bond she and Brian shared over the years. We stayed on after she died. I could paint anywhere and Brian had turned the agency over to other, hungrier hands, and being here where everything had begun - and where my childhood had officially ended - seemed fitting. The décor is a little less austere now, a little warmer in tone and feeling. There are still the classic minimalist lines that so reflect Brian, though, and I thank everything that might be holy every day that we kept this place through all our incarnations and life changes. This loft is home, and always had been.

But it's just Brian and me. Everyone else has moved on. Ben and Michael are now in Boston where Ben became a tenured professor. Deb, of course, followed close behind. Ted is still in New York with Kinnetik. Emmett, surprisingly, moved back to the deep south with his long time lover, Calvin. Lindsay and Mel are still in Canada, still splitting up and getting back together, seemingly on a weekly basis.

And Gus. Fuck... What a man he turned out to be. He surprised everyone when he decided last year to dedicate his engineering skills to the ongoing struggle to bring fresh water to the most drought stricken areas of South Africa. Privately, we all suspect his sudden altruism had more than a little to do with a tall, dark eyed Ethiopian by the name of Nohe.

So, yeah, it's just Brian and me. Here in the loft. Here in Pittsburgh. Perhaps, under the circumstances, that, too, is as it should be.

::::

"C'mere," he says. His speech slurs a little more when he's tired these days. We knew that would happen but it still catches me off guard more than it should. But I go and sit with him, his soft jazz oozing from the sound system and the lights an ambient glow behind him. His fingers card through my hair and I want to cry again because next week will be twenty years since the very first time he touched me. And that's so much more than I ever thought I'd have with him and so much less than I want.

"Hey," he says. "'member when we took down that cop?" And I can almost hear a little smile break across his face. "What's his name..."

"Stockwell," I remind him.

"Yeah," he sighs. "Stockwell. He was an ass."

"That he was."

"You gave up school to bring him down."

"You gave up everything to bring him down," I reply and he rests his chin on the top of my head and is quiet.

"Not everything," he whispers after a long while.

We make love on the floor, a white plush rug leaving thread marks on the skin of my back, Brian's lips leaving burn marks on the skin of my throat. And it's like the first time and the last time and every time in between. Nothing has ever been as sweet, as perfect. Nothing will ever again be as sweet, as perfect. I only let a few tears run down my face as I hear him cry out my name and watch the arch of his elegant neck and feel his body tense into me.

"Not everything," he murmurs as his head comes to rest beside mine.

::::

"Fuck!"

I hear his pain in the word. I can already feel the tremor on the left side of his body, hear the increase in his respiration as he clutches at his head. And I want to scream. For it to stop. For him to fight it.

But I don't.

How can I? I've been there for every minute of every treatment that he's had for one, two and three. Well... for two and three. The vomiting and hair loss and skin burns and thrush and diarrhea and mood swings and fucking endless pain... and the goddamned fear that it would never, ever be okay again. He deserves so much more than that. So, no, I don't argue with him about it.

I'll simply hold him. For the rest of our lives. Because this time we know... we know... it will never, ever be okay again.

::::

He's laying back on the bed, duvet folded at the bottom, soft blue sheets caressing his still beautiful body. One of his hands is cupped behind my head, his ankles are crossed and it appears for all the world to be just another ordinary afternoon as he says it.

"I want you to live the rest of your life, Sunshine."

"Brian..." My voice chokes. He has no idea what he's asking of me. No idea.

"No Romeo and Juliet shit for us. No fucking suicide pact." Then again, maybe he knows exactly what he's asking of me. He pulls me to him and studies my face, his eyes resting on my mouth. Leans in slowly and touches his lips to mine. "Thus," he breathes into me, "from my lips, by yours, my sin is purged."*

And I want to fucking break. Again.

::::

We've both had a couple of shots of bourbon and he feels it more potently now so he's a little giddy. He eats his Thai while I push noodles around on my plate. His appetite's increased and mine is absent and he can't help almost giggling at the irony in that. And I want to record that sound and play it on an endless loop in my head forever.

"That trip we made to Hilo a few years back..." He's trying to eat and drink and snort at the memory all at the same time. "You got decked out in the local finery and danced half the night with dead weeds shaking on your ass..."

"It was a grass skirt, Brian," I defend myself and actually smile a little. And blush. "You were laughing so hard, making funof me, you almost choked on your pineapple. Had to perform the Heimlich..." My voice trails off and I wish... oh GOD... I wish this could be solved with the fucking Heimlich...

Brian's laughter slows down and he wipes his eyes and spears me with the hazel. Bright, bright hazel.

::::

"It's been a good day, Sunshine." He takes my hand and pulls me down across his legs on the chaise. "It's been a great fucking life, but there's no Heimlich this time," he reads my mind and I bury my face in his neck, bury my nose in the musky vanilla scent of melted ice cream and sex.

And I know he doesn't want to hear what I'm thinking now, hear how I won't survive this, hear how my heart will stop the minute his does... And I have to think it quietly and keep my screaming to myself because I can't really give him anything else but this... this last day he chose. No matter how fucking much it kills me to do it.

"I know," I say, and there's no hiding the crack in my voice and I hate him just a little. Because I know he's going to say it. He's going to make me do this and I can't. And I will. Because it's the last thing I can give him. I look down at the little parcel in my hand. At the foil that's wrapped around his life. And death.

And I hand him the water and the parcel. And I close my eyes as he swallows.

::::

"Tomorrow," he slurs beside my ear as he struggles to keep his eyes open. "Tomorrow... Gus first. Tell him not to come. Tell him... to name an aqueduct after his old man." He laughs dryly and his arms tighten around me. "Tell him... tell him I've gone to Ibiza where the beautiful boys are waiting for me... on the... beach..."

Everything I've held in claws at me to be let out. But I just hold him. And listen to his fading breath and his fading heart and his fading words. It's all I can do now. This very last thing. To give him his dignity.

"I loved you so long... wouldn't change anything, Sunshine... best thing in my life..." His eyes flutter but they don't move from mine.

"You're the best man I've ever known, Brian. The only man I've ever loved." I kiss his lips, his forehead. "Save a beautiful boy for me, okay?" He smiles.

He closes his eyes.

::::

There are those moments in one's life when the truth of things is inescapable. Those moments of clarity. You find them under street lamps on rainy evenings, on concrete in parking garages, in rundown mansions miles from town. They pop up on planes that are descending into crowded airports and beside vomit filled toilet bowls. You encounter them in the still of a darkened loft as your life slips away beside you.

I can finally let out the anguish that's been trapped for weeks inside me, clamoring for remedy since I sat beside him in that office in New York. Since I heard the pronouncement of a judgment that gave us no appeal. But strangely, now the anguish won't speak. It's been silenced by a moment of clarity.

He lived. So fucking hard. He loved even harder. And he called the shots on his ending. And mine.

No Romeo and Juliet shit for us. No fucking suicide pact... Tomorrow... Gus first... Tell him... to name an aqueduct after his old man.

He knows me so well.

I gather up the foil beside him and add it to the unwrapped one in my hand and flush it all away. Then I stretch my body out beside him and pull his still hand to my lips and let myself finally feel the pain. There's no reason to hold the tears now. No need to be stoic for him now. I'll do that tomorrow.

The very last thing he gave me.

Tomorrow.