This was most definitely not his kind of vacation. This celebration of homo pride in Key West. It would have made Justin smirk if it wasn't so very damned cliché. Having lived in San Francisco for a few years now and having seen the best of the best of the rainbow, it seemed a bit anticlimactic to him. But Thomas had wanted to come for the party and... well... why the hell not? He and Thomas had known each other for about six months and things were... casual... between them. Justin knew they would stay that way. He'd learned a long time ago that ‘relationship' was just the name of another Grimm's fairy tale, one filled with ogres and trolls. He no longer believed in happily ever afters. A disbelief he'd inherited, right along with the closet full of masks left behind by someone he mistakenly thought he knew once upon a time.

No, Justin Taylor was no longer the smiling optimist he'd once been. You live, you fuck, and then you die. Or disappear. Six of one...

It had been a long time since anyone had referred to him as Sunshine.

At first he thought it was merely a moment of déjà vu - that the alcohol and the similarities of atmosphere were playing tricks with his head and his perception and pushing him back to a time he really didn't want to revisit. But he couldn't avoid the trip. Or the pain. If Chris Hobbs poked his head around the corner of a hospice door somewhere, Justin's agony would be complete. And hadn't it had been years since he'd consciously thought of that name?

For a second Justin wondered at the irony, at how much more easily he'd gotten over the man who tried to kill him than the man he wanted to love him.

There were undeniable changes in the figure he was trying his damndest not to look at that put the lie to any déjà vu theory. The muscles a little less taught, the skin a little more sallow. But the tilt of the head and the familiar stretch of torso... It was him. Here. Leaning against the railing of a random bar balcony. Not quite smiling.

It took a few seconds for Justin to remember he had to breathe.

"I don't know if I'm relieved to see you alive or not."

Brian stiffened at the voice. One he had never expected to hear again. It was slightly raised to be heard above the music pumping from speakers on a nearby float and the general din of drunken partiers. He hung his head a bit lower over the balcony rail. Took a deep drag of his cigarette as he watched hands grabbing at strands of multi-colored beads, watched some fall to the ground below them.

"It's a temporary situation, I assure you."

"It always has been, Brian." Justin studied the man he had joined in leaning over the balcony railing. He could see it. A gauntness. A hint of sunken cheek. He'd seen the look - it was a particularly distinctive one - too many times. "Why'd you run away?"

Brian laughed darkly and pulled another lungful from the cigarette. "I'd think that was fairly obvious."

"I didn't ask if you were ill. You're right. That's pretty obvious." There was no accusation in the words. No judgment. Justin had a lot of years to process the possibilities and this is one he'd briefly considered. "I asked why you ran away."

Brian didn't answer. He'd never expected to have to answer, never expected to again see anyone he would have to provide an answer to. Hell, it had been six years since he'd left. Since the diagnosis and his decision to leave everything and everyone behind.

"I ran it over and over in my head. Had nightmares about it," Justin said. "Hell, I cried about it. Couldn't figure out what I'd done. I'd pushed too hard, hadn't pushed enough. Loved you too much, didn't love you enough. Took me years to come to even a modicum of peace with it."

"It wasn't about you, Justin."

"Fuck that. Do you think you lived in a fucking vacuum? Of course it was about me," he laughed humorlessly. "And... you made it even more about me that night at Woody's... I could have used some closure. We all could have."

"Yeah, well... closure is over-rated." Brian still hadn't met Justin's eyes. Couldn't.

"Seem anything you are personally uncomfortable with is over-rated, Brian. Love. Relationships. Communication. Closure... You really do think you get to make up all the rules, decide the futures for everyone who touches your life? Fuck you."

"Jesus... You sound like Mel," Brian said under his breath. "I... let you all move on. That's what I wanted."

Justin laughed loudly. "What you wanted. Christ! Are you really that dense? You actually believe that bullshit rhetoric? No one moves on from that kind of abandonment, Brian."

"Not cutting me any slack here are you, Sunshine?"

Justin flinched a bit at the unfamiliar name. "A hell of a lot more slack than you cut me when I walked over to the loft and found out you'd already listed it with my mother! More slack than you cut me when I lay in bed at night with panic attacks wondering if you were hurt or dead or drugged out or fucking in jail somewhere! You didn't give a shit about us moving on, Brian. You were worried about you!" Justin ran his hands through his hair, trying to take back the control he really hadn't wanted to lose. "Just admit it, Kinney. You were worried about what people would think about you. That's all."

Brian finally turned toward the younger man, feeling the flash of pain and anger in the eyes he'd never thought to see again. "I didn't want you or Gus or Michael to have to go through it, Justin! Watching me die! Putting your lives on hold while you all stood vigil! I didn't want that pity! Fuck it!"

"So... you wanted to save us from the pain of seeing you sick? And we got to trade that pain for the years of wondering if you were already dead? Well, thanks for the tender mercies, Brian, but you can damn well keep them."

"Fuck this, Justin. I don't have to explain myself or my actions. I never have, never will."

"No. You don't," Justin admitted. "But you will have to live what's left of your life with the knowledge of the consequences of you walking away. You don't get a pass on that, Brian, regardless of your reasons. You hurt a lot of people, some in ways they can never get over." Justin stared into the tired but still familiar hazel eyes. "We would've eventually moved on if you'd hung around, too. And we would have had you in the meantime. Gus would have had you. I... would have had you..." As tears stung his eyes, Justin realized he hadn't cried over Brian Kinney for years. He suddenly wondered if Brian had cried over him. At all. "You didn't save us any pain by leaving, Brian. You only traded up. And it kind of left us frozen." He reached out and touched Brian's face, his fingers running over skin he hadn't touched in six years. So familiar and so fucking foreign. He still loved him. Always would. Justin knew he would continue to live and work and create... He doubted, however, that he would ever completely move on. He felt betrayed by this man who could have given them all so much. Could have let them give so much. His heart broke one more time. "I hope that you, at least, are happy with your choices."

Brian watched, regret stinging behind his eyes, as Justin turned and walked away. He'd known from the beginning that he hadn't only left to save them, not just to allow them to move on. If he was honest, he'd have to admit it had been as much for himself that he'd left. The only thing he'd ever thought he had in his life of any worth was an image. The only legacy he could leave. But he'd walked away from his real legacy. From his friends. His family. From a man who had loved him beyond all reason and a son who had needed him, even if only for a few more years.

Here or there, leaving or staying, the truth of the matter was that people were going to be hurt either way. And Brian Kinney would die, either way. He'd wanted to spare them the pain of watching him fade, and himself the stigma of losing his legend at the hands of this fucking disease. In the end he'd fired the painful volley at them all himself.

He recalled telling Justin once that people cause their own pain.

He realized now he was only half right about that.