21.

The slap of skin on skin was deafeningly loud, punctuated only by the increasingly vocal cries that were being desperately muffled.  Ethan had his hand clamped over his mouth; his fingertips dug white indentations into his skin as he increased the pace of his hand on his cock.  With his legs looped around Sam’s thighs, he went momentarily blind as his back arched in response to Sam swiveling his hips mid-thrust; Sam moaned low in his throat as Ethan’s muscles clenched around his cock, right before he spilled all over his heaving chest and stomach.  Sam grunted and thrust forward hard as his orgasm stole the last vestige of control he had over his own body.  

Sam collapsed forward gracelessly; he felt Ethan wind his arms around his back as his breath gushed down over his lover’s skin, and he sighed heavily as he nuzzled his nose into Ethan’s neck.  For a while, the only noise in the apartment was the sound of the traffic passing on the street below, and the thundering of their hearts.  But then Sam groaned, and after pressing his lips firmly to the skin below his mouth, he reached between them to hold the condom in place as he carefully withdrew from Ethan’s body.  Ethan made a soft sound of disappointment, but he smiled drowsily up at his lover as Sam ran his hand down the pale skin that was stretched across Ethan’s ribs before rising to his feet. 

His bare feet made no sound as he crossed to the bathroom.  Skirting the candles and wine glasses from the remnants of their dinner, Sam entered the small room to throw the condom in the garbage can before turning the tap on.  He let the water heat up, scratching his stomach before rinsing a hand towel under the steady stream of water.  Cleaning himself up haphazardly, he rinsed the cloth out again before returning to the bed and performing the same task more thoroughly for his lover.

A fond smile crossed his face as he wiped the cloth over Ethan’s chest and stomach; his boyfriend was half asleep, and his nose wrinkled slightly as Sam reached between his splayed thighs and gently wiped away streaks of lube and sweat.  Tugging the sheets up over Ethan’s body, that affectionate smile turned into a grin when Ethan promptly rolled onto his side and curled up into a ball.  While his lover was full of controlled energy most of the time, he always reacted like this after sex – he would curl up in a ball and go to sleep while he recharged, and God help you if you disturbed his power nap; he could pout for hours.

Dropping the cloth on the ground beside their bed, Sam tugged on a pair of loose sweat pants and headed for the small kitchenette to make himself a cup of tea.  While sex almost always knocked Ethan out, it left Sam with residual energy that he would often pour into his music.  Taking his drink over to the couch that Justin had helped Ethan bring home, he sat down and lifted his guitar onto his lap; not wanting to compose or practice, he quietly went through the opening riffs of old rock songs as the notes flowed through his mind like water.

He was lost in the sounds of Hendrix when someone quietly knocked on the door; Sam jerked in surprise, and Ethan grunted as he shifted within his nest of sheets.  Setting his guitar aside, Sam padded across the room and unlocked the door; later, he would think to himself that he should have been surprised.  But he wasn’t; somewhere deep inside himself, he had been waiting for this particular visit.  Stepping back, he silently gestured for Brian to enter the apartment.  Brian’s eyes swept over Sam’s body; he took in the lack of shirt and the tattoos that covered most of Sam’s torso before he brushed past him.  Sam closed the door and slid the chain back into place without comment; there hadn’t been any interest in Brian’s steady gaze – only a look that told the young man that Brian was floundering. 

“Do you want some coffee?  Tea?”

Brian shook his head silently as Sam walked across the room and sat down on the bed; shaking Ethan’s shoulder gently, Sam waited until those sleepy brown eyes opened, and as Ethan squinted up at him, Sam lowered his head and brushed a kiss across the pout that was forming on Ethan’s mouth.

“We have a visitor; I’ll make you some coffee.”

The drowsy look in Ethan’s eyes was gone within seconds, and he nodded as he slowly pushed himself up into a sitting position.  The sheets pooled around his hips, and he pushed his hands through the tousled mess of his hair as he yawned.  Sam laughed softly as Ethan rubbed his eyes, and he leaned down to grab Ethan’s pants.  He tossed the balled-up material to his boyfriend, and then glanced back at Brian.  The man was staring at the floor; at the burned down candles, empty wine glasses, and the board that held leftover grapes, cheese, and crackers.      

Ethan stood up as Brian continued to stare at the floor; unashamed of his nudity, he pulled his pants on and then held his hand out for the cup of coffee that Sam had made him.  He watched Brian silently, and when the man finally dragged his eyes away from the floor, Ethan gestured to the couch.  Brian eyed the furniture for a moment before he crossed over to it and gingerly sat down.  He was unable to hide the wince on his face, however, once he was seated – the couch was angled in such a way that Brian was able to not only see the bed that Ethan had just crawled out of, but the bathroom as well.

“You have picnics on the floor?” Brian finally asked, and Ethan locked eyes with Sam momentarily before he looked back at Brian.

“Yeah, we do.  We’ve had them with Justin before; it’s a great way to enjoy each other’s company when you don’t have a kitchen table, and you don’t want to get crumbs in the bed.  Brian…why are you here?”

There was open curiosity in Ethan’s voice as he sat down beside Brian, and Brian swallowed hard as he dragged his eyes away from the bathroom and looked back at Ethan.

“I don’t know.”

Ethan sighed at the bewilderment in Brian’s voice, and he gestured to the room at large.

“Yeah, you do.  You want to know how it happened, don’t you?  How you ended up in this position, where Justin has shut you out, and you still have no idea where Sam and I came from.”

When Brian finally nodded, Ethan shifted his weight on the couch. 

“I should tell you to fuck off,” he asked quietly.  “To mind your own business; I mean, where the fuck were you, Brian?  But I can’t.  Because I saw the way you looked at Justin the night of the Rage launch – I saw the look on your face.  I saw how badly we hurt you.”

Ethan looked down at his hands and shook his head.

“I met Justin at the violin recital, as you know.  I was teasing him, telling him that he had distracted me.  He didn’t take it very well; I found out later that he always got hit on by guys trying to get into bed with the both of you.  He didn’t want to deal with yet another guy wanting in your pants, so he pulled back.  I saw him around school after that, and I made a point of stopping to say hi; one afternoon, he finally agreed to have coffee with me.  Sam met up with us, and I introduced him to Justin; that was when Justin finally relaxed around me.”

Looking over at Sam, Ethan smiled, before that smile faded and he turned back towards the other man.

“I won’t lie to you, Brian; I was attracted to Justin from Day One.  He was stunning, and he appealed to me on so many levels.  The more time we spent together, the more that attraction grew.  I was honest with Sam; I  told him how I was feeling, and he laughed and said he was glad he wasn’t the only one who wanted to have sex with Justin.  We both knew Justin was interested, but he seemed hesitant to make a move.  I thought that he was monogamous with his boyfriend, but Justin snorted when I asked him; he said gays didn’t get to ask for monogamy.

“But even with the attraction between us, there was a friendship growing with him that was more important to me… to us… than just having sex with him.  He understood the passion that Sam and I both have towards music, because he feels the same way about his art.  I can’t tell you how many times we met up and discussed how hard it was to learn when your talent outshone the people who taught the class you were taking.  How annoying it was to hear the students around you prattle on about ‘suffering for their art’ while Mommy and Daddy gave them a weekly allowance that we could only dream about – they wouldn’t know real suffering if it offered to suck their dick.

“The more time we spent together at school, the closer we all grew.  We’d meet up in the mornings and after school, and we’d talk about the projects we were doing, and ideas that we wanted to explore.  We became a support network for each other in a way – I can remember one instance where Justin’s professor was pushing him to further himself, and he was so angry because he couldn’t get his hand to work the way it needed to for the fine details.  He queened out in a big way, and it took both Sam and me to talk him down – to stop him from telling the professor to jam her mediocre talent up her ass.     

“I had never seen Justin go off like that before - like most people, I couldn’t see beyond that fucking smile; then one day, I did.  He was supposed to meet up with us for lunch, but he didn’t show.  That wasn’t typical for him, so I went looking for him.  I found him hiding in the library; he was huddled in on himself, and it was such a contradiction to see him like that when I was so used to his laughter, that I sat down with him and asked him what was wrong.”

Ethan shook his head and looked down at his hands for a moment before he looked back up at Brian with haunted eyes.

“He full blown gaped at me – like he couldn’t believe that I was asking him if he was okay.  Then he said there was nothing wrong; he wasn’t weak.  He wasn’t a sissy boy.  And the entire time he denied that anything was wrong, he was unaware of the fact that he was crying.  His hand was curled into a claw, and when I reached for his hand, he flinched and backed himself into a corner.  It was like approaching a wounded animal – I didn’t know how he was going to react when I touched him.  It took me several minutes to coax him into letting me help him, but in the end, he just caved in on himself; I massaged the cramp away, and he sat there and stared beyond me the entire time I was touching him.

“It was like I’d been blind, but could now see; Justin’s mask was gone, and I was so fucking rattled at what I could see behind the mirage he projected to the world.  I couldn’t believe I hadn’t seen how much he had been hiding before this; it was like the cramp in his hand had stolen his ability to conceal just how much he was hurting.  It scared the shit out of me… I don’t know how he managed to drag himself out of bed every day, let alone function the way he did before it all blew up in his face. 

“We sat in that aisle in the library for ages before he seemed to come back to himself, and when he saw that I was with him still, he couldn’t look at me.  I asked him what had happened to him to cause his hand to curl in on itself the way it had, and for a minute it was like he didn’t understand what I was asking him and why.  But when I repeated the question, the floodgate opened, and it all came pouring out.  Chris Hobbs.  Prom.  The fact that he had irreversible brain damage.  The fact that he had these horrible nightmares every night, and that he was too scared to go to sleep in case he woke up screaming.”

Shifting his weight on the couch, Ethan took the ashtray when Sam handed it to him and passed it over to Brian without comment.  Brian’s hand shook as he lit a cigarette, and he exhaled slowly as Ethan continued to watch him steadily.  Ethan maintained his silence until Brian gestured for him to carry on.

“I asked him if he had received any therapy for the bashing, and he said that he hadn’t, because he wasn’t some pathetic faggot who needed a band-aid solution to what had happened to him.  He was fine.  When I asked him what you thought about his nightmares, he admitted that he had hidden them from you.  He said that you were suffering worse than he was, because although he couldn’t remember the Prom, you did; you had witnessed what had been done to him, and he owed you enough for taking him in without adding to the grief he had already caused you.

“He didn’t want to speak to anyone about it – he said he was fine, that he was over it… that he had to let it go and move on.  I told him that was bullshit – you didn’t get over something like that by ignoring it.  I wouldn’t let up on him over the next few days; I made him go and see a therapist at school - I guilted him into it - I said that it hurt me to see him like that.  He got flustered when I said that; he said that he didn’t like hurting the people in his life, but that was all he ever seemed to do. 

“I told him that even if it came out that he was fine, that there was nothing wrong, he needed to know it himself.   So, he spoke to a therapist at school; she immediately recommended that Justin get some counseling - she said that he needed help to overcome what had been done to him, that it wasn’t a weakness to admit that he was struggling in all aspects of his life.  When Justin came out of that meeting, it was like someone had cut his strings – his belief that he was succeeding in hiding how he truly felt was gone, and so was his ability to keep a wall around him.”

Ethan rose to his feet as he shook his head; crossing to the kitchenette, he placed his cup in the tiny sink before he turned to the fridge and pulled out three beers.  Passing one to Sam, he returned to the couch and offered one to Brian.  The man’s face was pale, and he kept swallowing convulsively as Ethan opened his own and took a mouthful.  Brian lowered his eyes, and as Ethan stared at him, he saw Brian run his palm over the scratchy material of the couch as his eyes flicked back towards the empty wine glasses.  Ethan sighed, and gestured to the empty glasses.

“I know about the picnic he prepared for you at the loft,” he said finally, and when Brian’s eyes snapped towards him, the corner of Ethan’s mouth lifted slightly.

“I… was… was it meant to be a…” Brian coughed as he cleared his throat, and if the moment wasn’t so fraught with tension, Ethan would have laughed.  “…a romantic picnic…?” Brian eventually asked, and Ethan slowly shook his head as Brian looked at him.

“No…it was so Justin could tell you the truth; he was drowning, and he needed help,” he said finally, and Brian paled as he rolled his lips into his mouth.

“Justin now knew that he was in trouble; that he needed some sort of support,” Ethan said gently.  “He said that seeing the therapist at school had forced him to understand that he wasn’t over the bashing; that he had hidden it from you because he didn’t want to hurt you and remind you of what you had seen.  I told him to go home to you, Brian - to be honest with you.  I told him to prepare a spread of all of your favorite foods.  To buy a really nice bottle of wine; it would make what he had to say go down easier.  I told him that when you got home, to sit down with you and explain what the therapist had told him.”

Ethan shook his head as he looked down at his hands.

“Justin refused; he said you didn’t do nights in, let alone picnics on the floor.  He said you’d probably laugh your ass off if he even suggested it.  I told him he was wrong - that if he admitted to you that he needed help, you would stay in for the night and listen to what he had to say.  That you would support him, and not make him feel like he was weak because he needed therapy.  He said I didn’t know you; that you didn’t do romance, and that that was how you would perceive the picnic.  I told him that this wasn’t about romance – it was about stripping away the walls he hid behind and showing you how he was feeling. 

“He didn’t believe me, but I eventually wore him down.  I took him to this little deli near your loft, and he spent the last of his money on food and wine.  I went to the loft with him and helped him set it up on the floor; he snorted when I set the candles out and told me that I needed to seriously rethink what romance was and wasn’t – because in his book, candlelit dinners equaled romance.  He still thanked me, though, for helping him; he said he hoped I was right, and that he’d see me the following day.  We parted company, and when I next saw Justin, I asked him how it went.”

Ethan smiled wryly as he tilted his beer towards Brian mockingly.

“We both know how that picnic turned out, don’t we?” he said, and Brian lowered his eyes.

“Ethan…”

There was a warning in Sam’s voice, and Ethan hissed out his displeasure when he looked towards his boyfriend.  But when he looked back at Brian, he sighed.

“I’m sorry,” he said eventually.  “That was uncalled for.  You didn’t know; no one did.  Justin had gotten too good at hiding how he felt.  When I saw him the following day at school, I asked him how it had gone – he told me that he had wasted his last hundred bucks and that he should have known better.  He wouldn’t say much after that, but I felt so fucking guilty; I told him to come over whenever he wanted – I’d play him a song, and we’d get drunk on cheap wine.  So, he did… he came over that night.  He and Sam were sitting right where you are now; drinking wine and listening to me play the violin.”

Ethan smiled thinly as Brian closed his eyes; Brian knew precisely where Ethan was leading him, and the violinist didn’t disappoint when he shrugged.

“That was the night that we had sex; Justin fucked Sam.  And I fucked Justin.”

Ethan let that statement hang in the air; he knew that Brian wasn’t happy about it – knew that the adman was clenching his hands into fists so that he wouldn’t lash out before his need to know what had happened had been fulfilled.  But as Ethan opened his mouth, Sam made a slashing motion with his hand.  

“Babe; take a chill pill.  This is all in the past for us.  We’ve had time to come to terms with this; Brian’s had what… weeks?  We’ve had five months, Ethan, and unlimited access to Justin… be fair, okay?”

Ethan’s lips settled into an annoyed frown; Sam knew how upset Ethan was, and he crossed to the couch and pulled his boyfriend to his feet.  Cupping Ethan’s face in his hands, Sam pressed a light kiss to his unhappy lover’s mouth before he gestured to the kitchenette.

“Grab us another beer, okay?  Go on.”

Rubbing his hand over Ethan’s stomach, Sam gently pushed him towards the small area, and then took Ethan’s place on the couch.

“You all right?” he asked as he glanced at Brian, who shot him a dirty look.

Sam merely shrugged, and when Brian finally shook his head, Sam hummed softly under his breath.

“How’d the art show go today?” he asked quietly, and when Brian’s eyes snapped to his, Sam’s mouth curved into a nasty little smirk.

“Renee was a persistent little bitch, who didn’t understand that Justin being gay meant she wasn’t getting anywhere near him.  Not unless she grew a cock.  She’d apparently been taking photos of him all year; even before she asked him to pose for her.  I’d warned her off a half a dozen times, but then a girlfriend of mine told me that Justin was the focus of her exhibition.”

“There was one of him in the hospital,” Brian said hoarsely, and Sam grimaced.

“You’re kidding, right?” he asked in disbelief, and when Brian shook his head, Sam pursed his lips.

“I made her take them down,” Brian said finally, and Sam smiled briefly as Ethan crossed the room and pressed a bottle into Sam’s hand.  When Ethan settled himself back on the bed, Sam gestured towards Brian with his beer.

“Good; I hope the nasty bitch remembers how it feels to have her choices taken away.  Now, where were we?... Ahh…as tipsy as Justin was that night, he made sure that we understood that he didn’t kiss anyone but you on the mouth when he was tricking – it was important that we respected that.  When we said that we did, he relaxed; it was fun - we laughed, and we fucked, and we laughed some more before he went home.  Ethan went to Harrisburg for a recital the next morning; Justin and I met up for lunch, and we had a giggle over the fact that we were more comfortable around each other now that we’d fucked than we had been previously.  The tension that had always been there was now gone. 

“Justin explained the rules of your relationship.  He said he had trouble following them, that he had kissed a virgin after he’d fucked him one night, but as I said to him, some men can fuck an anonymous ass with no problem.  Other men are more comfortable being friendly with their tricks.  He said he wouldn’t know… he felt like he had betrayed you somehow.  He wouldn’t explain it; he changed the subject, instead, by showing me the posters that he had been made for Rage.  I helped him put them up at PIFA.  Ethan came home the following day, and when he saw the posters that were up all over school, he went looking for Justin; he had explained weeks ago all about the comic book, and we were both so fucking proud of him.

“Justin came over that night, and he was practically vibrating; that energy was how we ended up in bed together again.  In his eyes, that was the night he broke another one of your rules.  He fucked Ethan, and I fucked him.  But as I said to him, it didn’t matter.  It wasn’t like he had fucked me, and Ethan had fucked him again.  The players were the same, but the roles were different.  He hadn’t kissed either one of us; oh, we kissed each other hello and goodbye all the time, but it was never on the mouth.  That was when Ethan said he had kissed Justin on the mouth before; he’d kissed him that day when he had met up with Justin about the posters.

“I asked him how he had kissed Justin and Ethan started laughing as he teased Justin; he crawled into Justin’s lap to demonstrate.  He peppered Justin’s face with little kisses.  And between those kisses, he had told Justin how brilliant he was.  How smart he was.  How the world was his stinky little oyster.  And how fucking proud of him we both were.  Then he kissed Justin on the lips – one of those kisses where you go ‘mmwah’ – where it’s more noise than tongue.  Justin was laughing; he called Ethan a cheeky fucker, and then he got dressed.  Before he left, he asked us if we understood that we’d never end up in bed together again.  We reassured him that we understood the rules he had with you, and that it was just sex.  He laughed; he told us that it had been one of the hottest hookups he’d ever been involved in, and then he left.”

Sam fell silent when Brian dropped his eyes down to his hands; the man had paled slightly at the end of Sam’s dialogue, and he was biting his lip hard enough to leave an indentation.  Sam cleared his throat, and when Brian eventually looked back up, the dread on his face was as clear as day.

“Justin ended up back here a couple of hours later; it was like he’d climbed into his clothes without getting dry first - his hair was wet, and his clothes were damp.  He kept apologizing for waking us up.  We asked him what was wrong, but he refused to tell us.  All he’d say was that he’d hurt you, that he’d broken the rules; he was so fucking rattled that he couldn’t calm down.  Every time one of us went to touch him, he’d flinch and move away.  We eventually got him to lie down on the couch, and when we got up the next morning, he was gone.  He avoided us for most of the day; I eventually cornered him at school, and he said that you guys had had a fight the night before.

“I asked him what it had been over, but he said he didn’t know.  All he knew was that you knew about the three of us somehow; you knew, and you were angry.  I told him to go home to you and explain the fact that it was just tricking.  His way of tricking might differ from yours, but it was still just sex.  I didn’t see Justin again until the following night; Ethan and I agreed that we should go to the Rage launch to support him, and to make sure that he was okay.  I dropped Ethan off, and I went to park the car.  And as I walked into Babylon, Justin and Ethan were walking out.”

Brian pushed up off the couch; threading his hands through his hair, he walked across to the window and looked outside.  Sam looked over at Ethan, who sighed as he shifted his weight.

“Why’d you kiss him?”

It was barely a whisper, but Ethan’s eyebrows rose when the gravelly sound reached his ears.

“When I met up with Justin inside, he was visibly upset,” Ethan said finally.  “I asked him what was wrong, and he said that you’d sent him a message; it was a message that he couldn’t ignore.  I asked him what he meant, and he said that he’d found you fucking Rage.  Not in the backroom; but in full view of everyone at Babylon.  He said it was bad enough when you tricked in front of him, but to fuck Rage?  The character that he had developed?  He said that he couldn’t do it anymore; he couldn’t stand the humiliation of being your public whipping boy.

“Justin said that he wished he could tell you how much it hurt him whenever you showed him how he would always be your second choice…your backup fuck.  And while he was saying this, while he was fighting back tears in front of all the people who had seen you fuck Rage, you came up the stairs; you hadn’t seen me yet, but I saw you. The one thing Justin had insisted on when we fucked was no kissing; I looked at you, and I looked at Justin, and I saw how much you had hurt him at that moment.  He couldn’t hide it.  You had no problem humiliating him; no problem fucking other guys in front of him.  I wanted to publicly humiliate you the same way you had humiliated him; only I didn’t need to fuck Rage to do that - I only had to kiss him.  So, I did.” 

Ethan shook his head as his mouth twisted into a bitter smile.

“Justin tried to pull back from me; I didn’t let him.  And when I finally did, and I looked towards you?  I saw the look on your face; seeing me kiss Justin had more than humiliated you.  You knew you’d lost him in that moment; you were unable to hide how much it had hurt you to see him kiss me.  And I was glad; you don’t fuck with my friends.  But then Justin looked towards you, and those great Kinney walls he had once told me about were thrown back up; he didn’t see the hurt, Brian.  All he saw was your indifference.  That’s why he left with me; that’s why he came back here.  That’s why he sat on that couch and tried to figure out what he was going to do, while trying to hide the fact that his heart was breaking.”

Brian pulled another cigarette out; his hands continued to shake as he lit it, and Ethan swallowed hard.  It had been so easy to paint Brian as the bad guy in this scenario.  So easy to blame him for everything.  But watching those hazel eyes flit around the room as he inhaled on his cigarette, Ethan knew that nothing was easy about this man; nothing was straightforward about his relationship with Justin, or the way they felt about each other.  Rising to his feet, Ethan slowly crossed the room and put his hand on Brian’s arm.

“Do you want to hear the rest?” he asked quietly. 

For a moment, Ethan didn’t think Brian was going to acknowledge him; but then he swallowed, and he nodded once.  Grasping Brian’s wrist, Ethan led him back to the couch and sat down.  Turning his body slightly, Ethan unexpectedly felt a sympathetic urge as he reached to clutch Brian’s hand under his.

“Justin was gone in the morning; he had a shift at the diner.  He met up with Sam at PIFA after lunch, though - Sam told me later that he had found Justin sitting in the courtyard; his bag was at his feet, and he was staring out into space.  Sam asked him if he was all right, and Justin lost his shit.  He said that he had hoped that maybe you’d talk to him at the diner, that perhaps you could still sort things out.  But you all ignored him; he said that the family had taken your side and cut him dead, so, he’d gone to the loft to pack his stuff before you came home from work and threw him out again. 

“He said he didn’t know what to do; he’d lost everything, and he had no idea why.  He didn’t have anyone to turn to; he didn’t have anywhere to go.  Sam told him that he had us; he was coming home with us, and he could stay for as long as he wanted.  Justin stayed here for the next few days; he worked, and he went to school, and he sat on the couch and smoked all night.  He didn’t sleep.  He didn’t eat.  He shut down.  Nothing we said or did made a difference.”

Glancing at the bathroom, Brian finally looked back at Ethan with his lips sucked into his mouth.  Ethan managed a small smile, but then he nodded as he exhaled shakily. 

“I came home between classes, because I hadn’t seen Justin at school.  He never showed up for his mid-morning class.  When I got here, I saw his bag on the couch.  The bathroom door was shut, so I called out to him; I asked him if he wanted a coffee or a sandwich.  He never answered me.  I knocked on the bathroom door; when I pushed it open, the curtain was partially closed around the tub.  I saw the medicine bottle on the sink; Justin had had a bad headache for the last couple of days, and I didn’t think anything of it.”

Dropping his eyes, Ethan finally let go of Brian’s hand, only to twist his own in his lap as his voice dropped.  His eyes slowly glazed over as he fell back into his memories; he was blind to Sam crossing the room to kneel at his feet.  Blind to the tears that were slowly welling up in his eyes.  And blind to the pain that so clearly etched itself on Brian’s bloodless face with every word that left Ethan’s mouth.

“I didn’t see the bottle of Beam until I kicked it; it was hidden because of the shower curtain.  It was then that I saw Justin’s arm hanging over the edge of the bath.  I pulled the shower curtain back, and for a minute, I just thought he’d finally fallen asleep.  He looked so peaceful… but then I reached down, and I shook him.  He…uh… I felt the water and it was cold, so I started calling his name; yelling at him to wake up.  He didn’t… I slapped his face, and when he didn’t react at all, I reached for the pill bottle.  It was then that I realized they were sleeping pills. 

“I shook him again, and then I dragged him up and out of the bath.  I forced his mouth open, and I shoved my fingers down his throat as far as I could.  He vomited all over me - all over himself - and all I could smell was the Beam.  There were partially dissolved pills in his vomit, and when I realized that there were way more than there should be, I called 9-1-1.  The lady on the other end of the phone told me to stay with him; she told me to keep her on speaker phone, and to put Justin in the recovery position.  To keep my fingers on his pulse, and my other hand on his chest.

“I did as she said, and she kept talking to me; asking me if he was breathing okay, telling me to keep calling his name.  She asked me if the door was unlocked, and I said no.  She told me to go and unlock the door, and to leave it ajar for the paramedics.  I did as she told me, and when I came back, she said to put my hands back on Justin’s chest and pulse.  When I did, he had stopped breathing.  I freaked out, but she was so fucking calm.  She told me to roll him onto his back; she said that I would have to perform CPR on him until help arrived.

“She walked me though each step; how to pinch his nose shut, and how to blow a recovery breath. What I had to listen and look for.  She kept telling me what a great job I was doing, that the paramedics would be there soon.  To keep checking his pulse between breaths, so that if his heart stopped, I could change up the compressions.  I kept blowing air into his mouth; all I could hear was his voice telling me that he didn’t kiss anyone but you on the lips, and here I was, with my mouth on his… I remember thinking that he was going to be so pissed about that when he woke up.

“The paramedics arrived, and they took over the CPR.  I thanked the lady on the phone… I don’t even remember her name… and followed the paramedics down to the ambulance.  They loaded Justin into it and told me to climb in front, so they could keep working on him.  I called Sam… all I wanted was for Sam to tell me to wake up, that this was just a bad dream…. He said he’d meet me at the hospital, and to keep my shit together.  When the ambulance got to the hospital, Justin was taken straight through to the emergency department.  I was grilled by the medical staff about how I had found him, and what he had taken.

“I told them about the sleeping tablets, and the bottle of Beam he had been drinking.  Then they asked me what had been going on; so, I told them: his conversation with the therapist at school, the breakup of your relationship, and the loss of his job, his home, and his friends.  And the entire time I was talking to them, I could see what they were doing to him.  I could see them forcing the tubes down his throat… the doctor I was talking to told me to call Justin’s parents, so I called Jennifer, and then Daphne.  By the time Jennifer and Daphne arrived, Justin had already been sedated and they were getting ready to move him to the psychiatric unit. 

“They had restrained his wrists to the rails on the bed; I asked why, and the nurse in the room said they treated all possible suicide attempts this way.  I couldn’t believe it… all I could think was, how did this fucking happen?  How did I miss how badly he was handling everything in his life?  I mean, he could barely fucking function… it was my fault… if I hadn’t kissed him… I just stood there and cried after the nurse left the room…all I could think was, don’t you fucking die on me…”

Brian moaned low in his throat; the sound was deafeningly loud, and it snapped Ethan out of his memories and into the present.  And as he stared at Brian, at the pain that ravaged the other man’s features, the tears in his eyes spilled over.  

“I am so sorry for my part in this, Brian,” he managed to say as Sam closed his hands over Ethan’s knees.  “I never thought he’d do something like this; I never thought he’d sink as low as he did.  If I hadn’t kissed him, he might have gone home with you.  If I hadn’t…”

Brian slowly turned to look at the young man sitting beside him when Ethan’s breathing hitched painfully as he sucked in a ragged breath; he recognized debilitating guilt when he saw it, and he reached out without thought.  Wrapping his hand around the back of Ethan’s neck, he pulled the young man closer to him and into a rough embrace.  As he leaned his cheek against Ethan’s head, he felt a momentary hesitation before Ethan wrapped his arms around Brian’s waist and clung to him.

Brian forced himself to keep breathing; to not close his eyes and pretend that he hadn’t just heard how bad it had been.  Instead, he focused on how grateful he was that Ethan had come home early that day; focused on the fact that these two young men had tried helping Justin, while he had been blind to what had been going on.   And as his shirt grew wet from the silent tears that Ethan was shedding, he forced his fractured mind back together and managed to speak.

“It wasn’t your fault.”

The memory of Justin telling him the same thing in the loft after the bashing flittered through his mind, and Brian shuddered.

“It wasn’t your fault,” he repeated when Ethan shook his head.  “Not yours…not even mine, even though I was the one who threw Justin off the cliff.  The blame rests solely with Chris fucking Hobbs.”

Pulling back, Brian sniffed as Ethan looked up at him, and Brian managed to smile slightly.

“Chris Hobbs did this to Justin, Ethan.  A… kiss… didn’t put those pills in Justin’s hand.  Me fucking Rage… didn’t make him swallow them.  Chris Hobbs did this; Justin tried telling me that it wasn’t my fault, and I still blamed myself.  We all had a hand in making Justin hide from himself; we have to live with that.  But we didn’t cause the depression… I should have known, though,” Brian said hoarsely, and Ethan shook his head as he reached up and wiped away the tears that were slowly rolling down Brian’s face.

“Maybe.  Maybe you should have seen behind Justin’s walls; maybe you should have known that he was struggling.  There are thousands of maybes in this scenario, Brian, but when you are suffering from PTSD yourself, how can you see what’s right in front of you when you are blinded by your own pain?”

Brian’s eyes widened, and even as he shook his head in denial, Ethan was huffing out a disbelieving laugh.

“Oh, my God, Brian….you’ve never spoken about the bashing either, have you?  Justin said it… he said you were hurting… his pain wasn’t the only one that was well hidden, was it?  But where Justin withdrew into himself, you started tricking in front of him… drinking and taking drugs.”

Brian shook his head, but Ethan reached out to grab his shoulder and squeezed it firmly.

“Brian… how can you deal with someone who changes so drastically in such a short amount of time, when you don’t even realize that you are suffering yourself?  Have you spoken to anyone at all about the bashing?”

When Brian shook his head again, Ethan pinched the bridge of his nose.

“Your friends?  They suck!” Ethan spat, as he shoved his hands through his hair.  “I suggest you get some new ones; maybe ones who will call you out on your shit, and not let you ignore something as monumental as seeing your lover getting his fucking head caved in!”

For a half a minute, Brian considered everything that Ethan had said; but then he sighed heavily and pushed the words out over the guilt and shame that coated his mouth.

“When I found out about Justin, I tried my hardest not to make any excuses… I won’t start now, no matter how tempting it is.  I treated Justin like shit.  I denied having any kind of feelings for him; both publicly and privately.  I mean, fuck, you said it yourself… I fucked Rage…right in front of him.  I didn’t acknowledge how proud I was of what he and Michael had done with the comic; I fucking humiliated him instead.”

“Why did you?” Ethan asked, and Brian laughed bitterly.

“I thought he was with you,” he said finally.

Ethan jerked back from Brian with a startled sound, and Brian dragged his hands down over his face.

“I knew about you… I knew Justin had been seeing you.  That you’d been fucking around.  I didn’t know about Sam,” Brian said finally, and understanding dawned on Ethan’s face slowly as compassion glowed in his eyes.

“You thought he was cheating on you…with me,” Ethan said, and when Brian huffed, but then nodded, Ethan sighed.

“You took away his choice, because you thought he couldn’t… or wouldn’t…choose.  Jesus, Brian… you should’ve just asked him.”

Brian licked his lips before he finally nodded, and Ethan slumped against the couch.  But when he reached out and tangled his fingers with Brian’s, he felt the older man squeeze his hand briefly before letting it go.  They sat in silence for a while; Sam got another round of beer, and Brian drank his slowly.

“You love him… don’t you?”

Ethan’s words were wistful; spoken softly in the room that held such horrible memories.  Brian turned his head and looked into those soulful brown eyes.  He could see what had attracted Justin to the young man; his romantic looks aside, there was genuine emotion on Ethan’s face.  Understanding.  Compassion.  And deep-seated kindness.  Brian exhaled softly as he stared at him.  Whatever he saw on Brian’s face in that moment caused Ethan to smile as he curled further into himself on the couch.

“Good…”

Ethan closed his eyes, and then sighed.  Brian continued to watch him, and then spoke his veiled fear quietly as Ethan’s face began to flush when sleep slowly began to seep through his bones.

“Justin said that he had loved me… loved…past tense…”

Ethan laughed softly, even as sleep slowly crept over his face.

“He loves you… might not wanna… but he loves you.  Don’t doubt that, Brian… don’t doubt him.  Show him that he isn’t your second choice…the backup…”

Brian continued to watch Ethan as the young man’s voice trailed off and he fell asleep.  There was innocence on Ethan’s face as he slept; the same innocence that all but glowed from Justin when he slept.  Comforted by that, Brian closed his eyes, and let the memories of Justin sleeping beside him wash over him.  He never felt Sam steer Ethan up from the couch and coax him into bed.  He never felt the gentle hands that guided him onto his side; those same hands slipped a pillow under his head and tucked a warm blanket around his body. 

For the first time in a long time, Brian dreamed of blue eyes that reflected love, and the soft whisper of his boy confirming those feelings; when he eventually woke up, he felt rested.  But more than that, he felt ready.  For what, he wasn’t sure.  But as he silently folded the blanket and left it on the end of the couch, he knew that the two boys who slept tangled together had a lot to do with it.  Looking at them, thanking them silently for everything they had done, Brian slipped out of their apartment and into the dawn of a new day.