Brian's Letter:

Dear Justin, 

Alright let's be honest here, we both know that I'm good with words...Hell, I wouldn't be the world class ad man I am if I wasn't, but I'll be damned if I know the right words to say to you now. Okay, I might as well start off with the biggie. Justin...I'm sorry! Yeah, I know, I said no apologies no regrets....the number one mantra that I lived by. But I do have regrets Sunshine and I want you to know that I'm sorry for those mistakes. The only good thing that came out of them was that I learned to trust you completely because when I screwed up you never stopped loving me. I know that now. 

Take that very first time I hurt you. I followed you out to your car and told you straight to your face that I'd already had you....that I don't do repeats. You were so young, so vulnerable and starry eyed. I had to shock you into going away because I sensed that you were special even then and I simply couldn't let you get too close. If you did, you might creep up under my skin and invade my well ordered life. I have to be honest. It hurt me to see your face crumple like it did. But I honestly thought I was doing the right thing for us both. I knew I would probably bring you as much pain as you could possibly bring me. I was right, wasn't I? I guess I should apologize for what happened next, but I don't really think you want me to. I saw you on that dance floor at Babylon and I simply couldn't resist having another go at you. I mean, damned if you weren't so appealing squeezed between those two men and I couldn't get the image out of my head of how trusting and totally giving you were with me. All it did was convince you that I was more serious about you than I was capable at that time of admitting. It was true though. I liked you but right then I could have lived without you and I desperately wanted to keep it that way. 

By the way, I'm not going to apologize for telling you that I wasn't your lover, partner, or even friend when you came by my loft to get away from your mother after she tracked you down. I don't think it hurt you at all because I don't think you even believed a word I was saying...especially the friend part. I guess I was throwing out mixed signals, so I should apologize for that. One second I'm holding your face gently in my hand and the next I'm tossing a blanket at you and ordering you to stay on the couch for the night. I guess I can't blame you for hanging in there and continuing to try and make me accept you as more than a one...or make that three night stand. Ahh, the optimism of youth. I hadn't counted on that, had I?

That first year must have been a roller coaster ride for you and it was my fault. One minute I'm ignoring you and the next I'm gathering you to me as if we were more than just friends. All the while I'm denying to the world that there is anything between us. Did you know that practically everybody we know called me on the bullshit....Debbie more so than anyone? She's a perceptive busybody. I truly had no clue as to how much I was falling in love with you but she saw it. It was that second year that cinched it for her. Mikey saw it too when he stayed by my side after that bastard bashed you.

Now there is something that I owe you a big time apology for. I was a real turd for letting you think I wasn't affected by your bashing while you were healing and still hospitalized. Damn it Justin, I couldn't face you. I had never felt such guilt in all my life. I just knew that it would overwhelm me if I made my presence known to you. I was cowardly about it. To this day I can't believe how well you understood what was holding me back, especially when we worked so hard to draw the memories out of you so that you could deal with them. You saw my fear and pain and ended up comforting me. What did I do to deserve that? I still don't know.

I owe you an apology for letting you think that I was being so good to you and welcoming you back into my home just because you had been bashed. What an idiot I was being. I did feel responsible but that wasn't the reason I wanted you near me. Debbie really nailed me on that one. That was the first time that someone actually said that I loved you to my face....well besides you of course. You didn't know this but when she stated that I loved you I didn't admit to it, but I didn't deny it either. I think that was the first time that I faced the possibility that what I felt for you was far beyond a casual friendship. I began to look at things differently after that. Of course I couldn't give up my independent ways yet. That would have been too much of a leap into the unknown. I wasn't ready for that. The fear of being hurt was still far too strong inside me so I committed one of my biggest mistakes. 

You did every possible thing you could to show me what you needed from me and I deliberately avoided almost all of them. I owe you a huge apology for putting you through the fire near the end of that second year. I know now that I was deliberately trying to drive you away. I wanted you to be the bad guy who broke it off so that I could say...I knew it would happen. You asked so little of me, but I just couldn't give it to you. I almost lost you over that blunder. I left you vulnerable to a sweet talker and got what I deserved. Gawd, I'm sorry for that. We wasted months for nothing. The only good thing that came out of that fiasco was the fact that I was finally able to admit that you were more important to me than I had ever admitted before. 

Life was pretty damned good there for a while, wasn't it? We finally had a meeting of the minds and both of us seemed to be comfortable with where we stood. I admit I was a little afraid that I had goofed again by encouraging you to go to Hollywood. I was convinced the bright lights would blind you to what we had and you wouldn't come back, but I was wrong again. But then again, maybe I wasn't so wrong. We were together again but there were subtle differences. I think you had grown up while away in Hollywood and maybe I have to admit that I was panicking over getting older. It was a lethal combo. You were reaching a point where you wanted to settle down into a stable relationship at just the moment that I saw my world moving away from me and no longer valuing me, and I needed desperately to hang onto it by any means possible which certainly didn't include settling down. So I did it again, didn't I? I drove you away by refusing to budge an inch and meet you half way on how you wanted our relationship to develop and grow. I hadn't yet learned that love means give and take and that compromise is not a dirty word. 

I owe you my biggest apology for almost waiting too long to grow up. It is sheer stupidity for an intelligent man to need a bomb blast to knock some common sense into his head, but that is what it took for me to wake up and smell the coffee. The notion of losing you permanently and in the worse way possible was more than I could bear. And worse than that was the thought that you would never have been given the one thing you asked from me...the most simple gift you longed for...for me to admit to your face that I truly loved you with all my heart. Well, I may be thick headed and stubborn but you have to admit that I finally got my act together. 

Of course I wish that was the last thing I needed to apologize for but...well we both know I couldn't let well enough alone. Again I decided for myself that I knew what was in your best interests and again I sent you out of my life. So now I'm offering you one more apology. Please forgive me for sending you away...for convincing you that you could only further your career if you moved to New York City. Justin, I don't believe that anymore. I need you back in my life. I need my Sunshine. I'm asking you to seriously consider coming back home. I'm asking you to forgive me one last time for being such an idiot. I love you Justin and I don't want to do so long distance. I'll wait patiently for your reply. 

With all my heart, Brian XXOO

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Justin's Letter:

Dear Brian, 

Got your letter. Damn it Brian, you make it sound like you were the only one who screwed up our relationship time after time. Give me a fucking break. Apologies....I owe you as many or more than you owe me. When we first met I was a dewy-eyed schoolboy (as you so bluntly and rightfully put it) and I had these visions of instant love dancing around in my head. It was your misfortune to fit the bill in every way of all those daydreams I carried inside me from the time I first realized I was attracted to guys. Your life was so comfortable for you. It ran smoothly in exactly the way you had chosen for yourself. Who was I to come in and declare that you were wrong in what you wanted for yourself? The fact that it turned out that I was the right one for you in the end is sheer luck on both our parts. It was fate and I can't apologize for fate, but I can apologize for making it so hard for you to deal with me. 

Let's face it Brian, I was a brat sometimes. Sometimes I forced you to feel things you were not quite ready for. Blame it on my youth. When you're young you don't have the patience for things to build slowly. The young want their needs and desires fulfilled immediately. That was the only reason I fell for the smooth talk of Ethan Gold. He wasn't Mr. Right...he was Mr. Right Now. He was willing to 'say' that he would give me whatever I wanted right now and not make me wait for it. What a numbskull I was. You owe me no apology for what happened with Ethan. I'm the one who couldn't see that you only wanted me to have whatever was going to make me happy. You know, Mikey wasn't always on our side but he did try to tell me how much you already loved me and that you were proving it with your actions over and over. I ended up having to admit that he was right. I owe you the apology for being too naive to see what was right in front of my own nose. I knew in my heart that you loved me but I didn't trust it with my mind. A lot of things would have been better if I had had more faith in you...in us.

The biggest apology I owe you is the confusing way I said one thing and then reacted in a completely different way. I can't count how many times I told you that I loved you just the way you were but then turned around and showed my displeasure when you didn't react to things the way I wanted you to. That came from a very selfish place inside me that I never liked to admit to. I guess, in a way, I wanted my cake and to eat it too. It took a lot of maturing for me realize what I was doing. By the time you had reached a point where you felt safe in declaring your love for me, I had finally accepted that I was in love with you completely....warts and all. I no longer wanted you to change and fit the mold I had in mind for you. Geez, in a way I wanted you to be Michael to my Ben. What an insane notion. Just picturing it makes me laugh. Neither one of us fits into that mold and the truth is that the very reason we could never be more than friends with either of those men is because they aren't what we really want in life. 

I know what I want for my future Brian, and it hasn't changed since I was seventeen years old. If anything, my desire to be your partner in life has only deepened but now I know I want to respect who you are as much as I love who you are. In other words, I want you to be yourself in every way. Then I also want the same from you, which you have always given me from day one. I want to love with you, live with you, fight with you, and make up with you day after day. I want to live adventures with you and revel in your successes while you revel in mine. I want to mourn your failures as you mourn mine. I want to be there as you grow old gracefully and continue to see the vital gorgeous twenty nine year old man I first fell in love with no matter what your physical appearance is. I want you to still think of me as that 'kid' you picked up under the street lamp even when I'm old and wrinkled and bent over with years.

My last apology to you will be for taking so long to eliminate all doubts about us and the future we can have and certainly deserve. You don't have to ask me twice to come back. I will have this place packed up and on its way to Pittsburgh before you even get this letter. You know Brian, there will probably be plenty of other times when we will owe one another an apology for some careless word or deed but we will never need to apologize for how we feel about one another. And more important than that...we will never need to regret one thing we did to, for, or with each other. It has all led up to this....Brian Kinney and Justin Taylor, separate people with one mind, one heart, and one soul to the end of our days.

With Enduring Love Forever, Justin XXOO

The End