Brian hadn't thought much more about Teo's invitation after that awkward moment, until the day before Taylor's first birthday. They were visiting Daphne in DC, opting this time to stay in her apartment, teeming as it was with books and school paraphernalia. She'd managed to make the 700 square feet quite comfortable, albeit not in a style that Brian would have chosen.
"Um... I've been seeing someone." The comment seemed to come out of nowhere.
They'd been watching a movie with Taylor, who had, predictably, fallen in love with animation. She clapped her hands as animals ran amok on the screen, captured by the movement and color. "Gog," she chirped. Her vocabulary was increasing daily.
Brian looked at Daphne. "Serious?"
"Could be."
"Good for you." Brian chuckled as Taylor reached out to pet a dog on the screen.
"Is that all you're going to say?"
Brian tilted his head and rolled his lips for a moment. "You don't need my approval, Daphne. You're a big girl."
Daphne sighed and tossed a pillow at Brian's head. "His name's Charles Jonah."
"Great, a man with two first names," Brian teased.
"This from a man with two first names."
"Kinney is not a first name," he retorted. "Okay, go ahead and give me the details. I know you're dying to." He watched the shy smile creep up on her lips.
"He's 30..."
"Ah, an older man. But he real question is... how big's his dick?"
"Oh, shut up. He's younger than you are... and his dick's just... fine, thank you." She blushed and looked coyly at Brian. "He works at the Capitol. He's a speech writer for Sen. McCutchen... He's fucking gorgeous."
Brian grinned. He wouldn't have expected less. "He know you have a kid?"
"Yeah. I told him everything... when it looked like it might get serious."
They both seemed to suddenly realized that the room was much too quiet and looked for Taylor. She'd fallen asleep holding her blanket, the middle two fingers of one hand slightly tucked into her mouth. Daphne smiled and carried her daughter off to bed. Brian had two bottles of beer ready when she returned and she curled up under his arm on the sofa. "I don't know if I ever want to get married or anything like that, but... I'm lonely, Brian. I want someone to just hold me sometimes. You know?"
Yeah, Brian thought, I know. For the first time Brian let his mind wander to Teo Marten. But when he tried to imagine the man's brown eyes, he could only envision those ringed with blue. Dark brown hair morphed into wheaten blond. Yeah, he thought again as he closed his eyes, going with the memory. I know.
::
January skies in DC were too damned open, Brian decided as he tossed aside his blankets and pulled himself off the sofa. Daphne's apartment was actually one of four in a converted Victorian house, only fifteen minutes drive from the university. The rent was a little higher than some places immediately around the campus itself, but Brian had insisted that she have her own laundry facilities and be in an area where she would feel safe and secure, so they had decided on something in the Logan's Circle area. Brian split the difference with the Chanders on the rent.
One of the initial draws for this particular place had been the windows. The old Victorian had lots of them, and the renovations had made good use of the existing structure. But as Brian had tried desperately to sleep, eventually giving up the effort, he cursed the fucking things. Most of his night had been spent staring out the large window at the end of the sofa, watching the moon compete with a universe of stars for dominance. The effect was haunting and melodramatic and fucking romantic, and he couldn't get past the way it reminded him of a certain night almost two years ago. The way it conjured up images of shifting lights playing like stars, chasing two men as they danced, made him suddenly need to clear his throat. Fuck!
He'd always hated birthdays on principle. Expecting adulation for something one had no control over, like the day of one's birth, seemed a bit gratuitous, not to mention the presage that aging and its effects are inevitable. Justin, however, had always appreciated the traditions, the ceremonial brouhahas that found their way into life. He'd grinned and gloated for days about Brian's own death-day celebration, loving the teasing and not so subtle reminders that Brian, too, was simply a mortal man. Brian wondered now, as he stood staring into a cosmos that held so many painful memories and potential joys, how he could ever have ignored Justin's eighteenth, how he could have so easily dismissed something that was so important to every young man - how he could have so disillusioned that particular young man. It seemed the epitome of cruelty in retrospect.
Here he was now, standing in wait to celebrate his daughter's first birthday, on the occasion of her real father's twentieth. He knew now. Taylor's birth and the import of that day had taught him well, and it was a lesson he'd needed to learn. Brian blinked and cleared his throat again and spoke into the night, his breath clouding up the glass in front of him. "Happy birthday, Justin. I won't forget. Promise."
Through a veil of damp lashes as he closed his eyes, he saw the sky shine and twinkle before him. It was the stars, he told himself. Just those damnable dancing stars.
::
"Mmm mmm..."
Daphne laughed and kissed Taylor's sticky fingers, pretending to eat the generous offering of second hand pancakes. "You've outdone yourself, Mr. Kinney. Her sticky fingers are the best I've ever tasted."
"Why, thank you, dear," Brian facetiously responded. "I figured pancakes were the closest I was getting to baking a birthday cake, and she can have just as much fun making a mess."
"We'll get her a small cake later and let her tear into that. Have to have pictures for the fams or they'll never let us forget it."
Brian nodded his agreement, knowing she was right. The families were all upset enough with them as it was for not including them in this day.
Daphne and Brian had made an agreement months ago that two days of the year were just for the three of them. Taylor and Justin's birthday and the remembrance of the day Justin was murdered. On those two days, they would stop whatever they were doing and just be together as a family. At least until Taylor was old enough to opt out. When she did that - and they knew it would eventually happen - then it would be Brian and Daphne themselves.
"You know, it should be freaking me the fuck out when she does that shit."
Following Brian's eyes, Daphne watched Taylor lifting her sticky fingers up above her, squinting her eyes as if she was looking closely at something. "Nmm nmm nmm," she chanted with a goofy grin. "Mamama."
Brian shook his head and shrugged. He couldn't dismiss a little quickening in his chest that got more and more prominent each time Taylor displayed her odd behavior. He'd been assured time and again by by Teo and Dr. Patterson, who'd resumed Taylor's care, that Taylor was fine physically and behaviorally. But they'd never really seen this, only had Brian's descriptions to go by.
It really didn't freak him out, but it did make him feel a bit... A bit what? Anxious? Worried? He wasn't sure, but as he watched his daughter seemingly enjoy encounters with no one, he grew increasingly uncomfortable.
::
When they'd tucked Taylor into bed that night, a tired and happy little girl snuggled up tightly to a new purple and yellow firefly pillow, those two middle fingers resting loosely between her lips, Brian listened as Daphne told him stories of Justin and other birthdays. Of cakes and candles shared with only his family and her, since Justin had never been one to have an abundance of friends. Much like Brian, Justin hadn't been the most popular of boys in school. He was the bright one, the sensitive artistic one from the beginning and that set him apart as an outsider.
"On his fifteenth birthday, all he'd wanted was permission to take a special art seminar one of the galleries was offering. It didn't even cost anything. Just required parents' permission. But his dad absolutely refused to allow it." Daphne's voice reflected the hurt and anger she felt for her best friend. "His dad got him a football instead."
"His dad was an asshole," Brian said, kicking himself once more for his own dismissal of Justin on the one birthday he could have celebrated with him.
"But, he just smiled and said thank you very graciously... then went upstairs and forged his mother's name on the permission slip." Daphne laughed. "He ended up hating the seminar, but it didn't matter. It still went in his win column."
"Shit," Brian laughed. "He really was a scheming little twat." Brian ran his fingers through a discarded bow leftover from one of Taylor's presents, and wrapped the length of ribbon around his wrist. Let it fall, wrapped it again. "I miss him so fucking much sometimes."
Daphne untangled the ribbon from Brian's hand, pulling his arm around her shoulders. "I know."
::
By the time the dust had settled from the holidays and Taylor's birthday, and various families had been appeased with visits and sleepovers and outings with their only granddaughter, spring was arriving. It had come as a bit of a surprise to Brian that Michael had enmeshed himself into Taylor's life. He'd become the beloved uncle and Brian's greatest supporter.
"It hurt for awhile," Michael had confessed, months earlier, over beer and pool at Woody's. Jennifer had taken Taylor for the night, and Brian had suggested a get together for their little group. The conversation shifted from old times to new realities over the course of the night. "I just knew I was losing my friend and being shut out. Took a while to sort it out."
"You did kind of do a 180, Brian," Ted said. "Not only kept your friends at arms length, but one day you're shoving your boy-toy aside for the nearest trick, and the next you're changing his kid's diapers."
"Teddy!" Emmett had his own issues with Brian, but to so cruelly taunt him about Justin was simply over the top.
The comment stung Brian deeply. Not that he didn't think he deserved it somewhat. But... fuck.
"So, we've finally arrived at the requisite Brian Kinney is an Asshole portion of the evening, have we? At least some things in life don't change."
"He's right, Teddy," Emmett admonished his friend, slowly stirring a pink martini. "That was a bit intentionally cruel, don't you think?" He knew, as did everyone around the table, that Ted's attitude had nothing to do with Justin or Taylor. It had everything to do with Ted's long-held jealousy of and resentment toward Brian. He also knew that there was no way Brian could take it as anything but painful.
Ted rolled his eyes and snorted. "Right. Like the name Brian Kinney isn't synonymous with intentional cruelty."
"Well boys, looks like the time has come for me to leave you to it." Brian rose from his seat and tossed money on the table between the remaining three men. "There...I'll even pay for your next round of drinks. Or perhaps Theodore could use it to upgrade his wardrobe. Wanna play out your idea of Brian Kinney?" He sneered down at Ted. "At least try to dress the part."
Truthfully, Brian was bleeding just a bit inside. Theodore wasn't really accusing him of anything he hadn't already accused himself of. And he knew Theodore had never been his biggest fan. He'd hoped, however, that even he had actually come to understand the changes Brian had made. To have someone so easily pass Justin and Taylor off the way Theodore had...
"Wait... Brian," Michael interjected quickly. "And Ted, you need to shut the fuck up. Brian did what he had to do."
"Didn't he always?" Ted asked. "Fucking everything with a dick or fathering children everywhere, Brian Kinney always did exactly what he wanted to do."
"Fuck you, Ted."
"Don't worry your pretty little head, Mikey. No need to throw yourself in front of a bullet for me. He's just toeing the party line, right, Theodore?"
Brian knew he would have, at one time, simply played the man's comments off. He'd have swallowed them down with a bottle of Beam and a good run of the backroom. But, he wasn't that man any more. That had changed with the swing of a bat and the birth of a child.
"And thanks for proving that I made the right decision in not letting you in on my life, as if I had any obligation to do so in the first place. There have only been three people in my life I've ever needed to justify myself to. Two of them are toddlers and the other one is dead. You're right that I failed Justin by listening to your kind of bullshit - and my own. But you're fucked up if you think I'll let that bullshit make me fail the other two." He turned and kissed Michael lightly on the lips. "Later, Uncle Mikey... And Theodore? At least I had the option to both fuck and father. Think about it."
In the months following that encounter, Michael had shown himself to actually be Brian's best friend. The jealousies and insecurities Michael had held on to for so long seemed to dissipate as he watched his friend changing his life around completely for a little wisp of a girl. In the beginning Brian thought Michael was just trying another way to live out some fantasy 'family' life with himself and Taylor in starring roles. But when Michael shyly introduced Ben Bruckner to his favorite little girl, with a look of complete adoration on his face for both Ben and Taylor, Brian realized Michael really was happy being his friend.
It was Michael who convinced Brian to risk everything to start his own firm, when Brian found out that Ryder was selling out instead of making Brian partner.
It was Michael who inadvertently named this new business, when he recalled an offhanded comment Justin had made one night after a few drinks at Babylon and a few hours of watching Brian's undeniable effect on the room's sexual energy.
And it was Michael and Ben who sat in silence with Brian after a phone call from Jennifer the last week in April of 2003.
Chris Hobbs had finally struck a deal. There would be no trial. He would plead to voluntary manslaughter, rather than third-degree murder, and receive the shortest prison sentence possible for that crime. Hobbs would spend ten years in jail. He would be classified as a felon for the remainder of his life.
Jennifer had been overjoyed with the deal. She'd grown weary of delay after delay, of depositions and questioning. She had no wish to revisit the horror of her son's death through a trial, to watch it play out again in the media in all its salacious detail. Brian had been less than joyful with the deal, however. Yes, he was weary of the flawed system, too. He was fully aware, however, of the distinction between the charges, and the implications that voluntary manslaughter carried with it. Although the sentence imposed would likely have been the same either way, the definition of the crime, in Brian's mind, made all the difference in the world. To him. For Justin. Especially for Justin.
"He's going to be in prison for ten years, Brian. There isn't even any hope for a parole or anything, right?"
They'd been sitting in silence for over half an hour before Michael had broken the quiet of the room.
"No. No parole." There was a lifelessness in Brian's response that Michael and Ben could almost see. That phone call had cost him a lot more than they could imagine.
"That's... it's a good thing, isn't it?" Brian didn't respond. "Brian?"
"Hey," Brian finally said. "Watch the firefly for me, will ya? I need to... just keep an eye on her for me." Before either Michael or Ben could question him, Brian had his keys and was out the door.
::
For only the second time Brian sat with his back against the rose granite headstone. A small arrangement of iris rested on the ground below the inscription. They looked like the ones Lindsay had always tended in her side garden. There was a small, smooth stone resting on the narrow flat space on top of the marker. Linds and Mel. Brian almost smiled. They'd never really accepted Taylor or Daphne, or Brian's connection to them, but they had loved Justin. He'd never deny that about them.
"Hey," he whispered into the cool afternoon air as his fingers played with the neatly cropped grass. "I see you've had some company." He turned his head and let his cheek rest against the chill of the granite. "I needed to be the one to tell you, Justin... Hobbs is in jail. He'll be in for at least a decade. Maybe, if we're lucky, he'll piss off big asshole enough to make sure he never walks out the gate again... Yeah, yeah, I know. You'd probably find some way to forgive his homicidal ass, but then... you always were a bigger man than me.... They fucking let him plead to voluntary manslaughter, Justin! Knowing your penchant for trivia, relevant and otherwise, I'm sure you know what the implications are with that... That he was provoked, we so fucking provoked him that he lost his grasp on reality and..." He took a breath, slowing himself down. "...and I just needed to sit here for a while."
Brian talked for an hour, about how much Taylor loved that fugly firefly pillow she'd gotten from Daphne. How he couldn't keep up with her now that she was running, and how her vocabulary had increased and she could string words together. About how freaking happy she was and how funny she could be. About her strange episodes of giggles and staring into empty space. About how Justin would so enjoy making fun of the very domestic nature of his life now.
About how, even after two years, Brian still missed him so much his fucking chest ached with it.
Brian never told Michael where he spent those few hours. Michael never asked. But he knew that Brian was more at peace when he came back. That was good enough for him.
A little over a week later, Taylor, Brian and Daphne spent a few days on a beach in Clearwater. On the 6th of May, Taylor smiled up into a calm blue sky as she opened her fingers and let a single white balloon sail free over the Gulf of Mexico.