The beginning was so easy

Do whatever to survive

Brian Kinney wasn’t like other boys. He knew that from a very young age -- that he was different. At the time, he couldn’t quite put his finger on why he felt so different, but somehow he knew that he didn’t quite fit in. And it seemed like his father knew it too. And it really made his father angry.

So angry that Brian’s earliest memories of his father included fingers pressing so hard into his wrists, his arms, his shoulders...his neck...that they left angry red marks that turned into bruises. Bruises that he’d have to find a way to hide once he started school, so people wouldn’t ask questions. Questions would only make things worse.

He tried to do everything right. Getting good grades, coming straight home after school to do homework without being asked, keeping his room clean and neat… But it was never enough. Eventually, darkness would fall outside, the front door of the house would open, and his father would stumble into the living room. Eventually, he’d make his way upstairs. Brian would lie in his bed, trying to be as still as possible, hoping the old man would think he was asleep. It never worked. He’d be jerked out of the bed by the collar of his pajamas, while the old man slurred about something Brian couldn’t understand, outside of the fact that he’d obviously done something very wrong. The stench of alcohol would become stronger as his father’s voice rose in volume. Then, a hand meeting his cheek in a hard slap.

The noise would wake his mother, who would come into the room to pull Jack off of Brian and drag him into their own bedroom to sleep it off. She never came back to check on her son -- to see the hot redness on his cheek, now wet with tears as he sank back against the wall, trembling...terrified… Alone.

Being alone became the story of his life. He was the weird kid in school...smart, a little nerdy, quiet, and...different.

As childhood morphed into early adolescence, he started to realize why he had always felt that he wasn’t like the other boys he knew. As some of them started to become interested in girls, Brian realized he was more interested in the other boys. He wanted to act on those feelings, explore them a little bit...but he also wasn’t stupid. He’d heard the very same boys he was crushing on call each other gay as an insult, like it was something horrible that no one could ever possibly want to be. Something you’d never want to admit to or act on, much less be proud of.

He’d sat in church next to his mother and listened to sermons about how homosexuality was a sin -- a one-way ticket to eternal damnation. He’d heard his father refer to a gay couple as “fucking fairies” once, as he imitated them -- mocked them -- with a limp wrist. He already couldn’t do anything right where his father was concerned, and he certainly wasn’t going to give Jack Kinney any reason to hate him more than he already did. That’s all Jack needed was more of a reason to smack his son around. More occasions for his mother to craft masterful stories to explain the split lip, the black eye, the bruises. Brian was just accident prone -- a klutz. He broke his wrist from falling off his bike, not because his father pushed him down and he caught himself wrong on the tile floor in Joanie Kinney’s kitchen.

He really thought that would have been the incident that would have tipped people off -- that would have gotten someone to call child protective services -- when his mother had to take him to the hospital, and she couldn’t quite keep her story straight. But they believed her charade -- that she was just flustered, panicked, seeing her dear son in such pain. He had to fight off a sneer when his mother told the nurse that she just couldn’t think straight, that was all.

Yeah, sure, she was just so overwhelmed with grief that she couldn’t remember the story she’d fabricated in the car on the way over. The story she’d demanded to know if he understood and agreed with. He remembered nodding his head in the passenger seat, blinking back tears as he used his left hand to hold his right arm against his body as gently as possible, his breath hitching as every bump and pothole in the road sent white-hot pain radiating up his arm.

But no one called. No one suspected a thing. Just like they never did. He spent the next six weeks with a cast on his arm, and continued counting the days, weeks, months, years until he would turn 18 and be able to strike out on his own -- to leave this hellhole for good. Until then, he just had to survive.

He didn’t have any friends -- not really -- until they moved to Pittsburgh in the 8th grade and he met Michael Novotny. Michael, whose house was always warm and smelled of garlic and homemade marinara sauce and lemon bars from the diner where his mother worked as a waitress. Michael, whose mother gave suffocating hugs that Brian secretly looked forward to because they made him feel safe and secure. Maybe even loved. Michael, who looked at boys the same way he did -- had the same thoughts, the same desires.

Michael helped Brian not feel so alone. He started spending most of his time at the Novotny house, indulging in Debbie’s homemade pasta and desserts, which he suspected were so plentiful every time he visited because she said he was too skinny and needed fattening up.

She never said much about the mysterious injuries Brian would sometimes show up with. She would just hug him -- gently, this time -- and give him a look as if to say she understood, and that if he ever wanted to talk, she would listen. He never gave her that opportunity, even as he came to view her more as his mother than he did his own flesh and blood. She loved him. Michael loved him. It was such a strange sensation -- to feel as if someone else loved him. He didn’t know what to do with it. He didn’t feel worthy of it. Not at all.

After all, that’s what he had always been told by his family, the people who were supposed to love him: that he was worthless, stupid, and an embarrassment. Unworthy of love.

But without Michael and Debbie, and their love that he was so sure he didn’t deserve, he wasn’t sure if he could have survived.

In the middle of my story
All I want is to feel alive

Fifteen years later, Brian Kinney locked eyes with Justin Taylor as the young, blonde boy leaned against a lamppost on Liberty Avenue. All he knew that night was that he had to have that boy...take him home, show him a good time. It was supposed to be a one night stand, but it turned out to be anything but. Justin Taylor had started to change Brian Kinney. The next thing he knew, he was dancing with the boy at his high school prom. Kissing him in front of his classmates. Singing and goofing around in the parking garage about how “ridiculously romantic” the evening had been. Pausing for a beat to gaze into Justin’s eyes and gently rub noses before kissing him. “Later,” they’d promised. He’d stopped to watch Justin in his side mirror as the young boy walked back toward the hotel, looking as if he was floating on air. Brian only had a brief moment to consider the fact that he was really starting to feel like he loved this kid, before another figure emerged from the left side of the mirror, carrying a baseball bat, and the next hour became a blur.

He remembered not knowing what to do -- clutching at Justin’s lifeless body, lifting up Justin’s head and seeing the slick sheen of dark red blood running down the side of his face. He remembered shouting, “No no no,” over and over, punctuated with a guttural utterance of the Lord’s name, as if to turn it into a prayer -- a distressed plea with whatever higher power there might be, to not let this be Justin’s last moment. His last breath. As if his pleas could somehow turn back time and give him a couple more seconds to get to Chris Hobbs before Chris got to Justin. To find his voice and shout Justin’s name just a second or two quicker, to give Justin time to react, to weave, to duck, to do something, anything. Anything other than lying in Brian’s arms, his right hand curled into an unnatural position as the life bled out of him and onto the cold cement floor of the parking garage.

He remembered sitting in the hospital hallway, alone. Feeling like his own soul had left his body back in that parking garage. Not knowing if Justin’s soul had gone with it. The pain of that thought was so agonizing that it left him feeling numb.

Michael came. In that moment, he remembered one of the nurses kindly asking if she could call someone for him. She didn’t bother asking if he was alright. He’d handed her his cell phone and said nothing -- he felt like he couldn’t move his lips, couldn’t get his voice to work. The last person he’d spoken with on his cell phone -- other than the 911 operator -- was Michael. So she’d called him. Michael, who was supposed to be on a plane to Portland right now.

Brian was sitting in the hallway, staring at the wall, when Michael walked up and sat down next to him, gently laying a hand on his back, between his shoulder blades. He felt Michael’s hand move upward, caressing the back of his head, as Brian remembered the last time he was in this hospital corridor with Michael, running to meet his son. Michael clutching his camera, ready to record the moment his best friend became a father, while Justin -- still just a one night stand -- trailed behind them. Brian had met the two loves of his life on the same night. He’d never felt more alive than he did in that memory. And he never imagined that several months later, he’d be sitting here waiting to hear if Justin was going to live or die. Wishing that he was dead himself. That Chris Hobbs would have attacked him instead of Justin, since it was all his fault anyway. He’d lived his life. Justin hadn’t yet.

He never thought he could feel more pain than he did during his difficult childhood, but this...this was excruciating. It made his formative years look easy. Brian had allowed himself to feel -- he’d let someone in -- only to have that person jerked away from him as their life hung in the balance.

And I am not my mother or father
And I am not yesterday's son
I'm not broken, I'm a wide open highway
With room to run

But Justin survived. And Brian had to fight with his feelings for the young boy who had to turn into a man so quickly. Justin fought to survive, fought to emerge from a coma, fought through a month of inpatient therapy and rehab to relearn how to use his right hand. All the while, Brian watched from a distance. He wasn’t sure why he felt so compelled to keep it that way -- was it because he was afraid for others to know he cared? Or was it because in so many instances in his life, love had led to pain?

Jennifer Taylor had tried to keep them apart. She’d told Brian in no uncertain terms that she never wanted him to see Justin again. It hurt like hell, and as he walked away from that conversation, he felt a sense of deja vu -- as if his soul had again been ripped from his body and tossed aside. This was what happened when he allowed himself to love someone.

When Justin found out what Jennifer had done and flew into a rage, Jennifer had showed up at Brian’s loft and asked him to take care of Justin for a while. She had no idea that decision was essentially a permanent one, save for a couple of missteps and mistakes along the way.

The longest mistake was Ethan. Brian knew what Justin needed, but he had been too chickenshit to give it. Too scared to say that he loved him. To make those feelings real with romantic gestures -- that wasn’t Brian Kinney.

No, Brian Kinney sucks, fucks, rims, and rams, all to stuff his own humanity so far below the surface that he hoped no one would ever see it. Even Michael and Debbie fell for the act most of the time. But Justin was different. He saw right through it, determined to see the real person submerged beneath all of the bravado and ego -- the true essence of Brian Kinney. The trembling, terrified child that he’d buried so deeply within himself. What frightened Brian the most was that Justin was starting to uncover what Brian really thought of himself -- that he was a worthless son-of-a-bitch who felt like he didn’t deserve love and pushed away anyone who tried to make him feel otherwise. He was onto him.

That’s why Brian didn’t say anything when Justin came home night after night smelling like another man -- the same man. Instead, he’d simply tried to push Justin’s buttons -- to make him feel guilty. Not because he wanted Justin to feel bad, but because he wanted him to just leave already. To make it easier. To go get the love and the romance that he deserved, that there was no way Brian Kinney could provide, because Brian Kinney wasn’t worthy of love.

Brian thought that was what he wanted -- for Justin to leave him be. And as soon as he watched Justin leave the Rage party with Ethan, he realized what a mistake he’d made. He spent the next couple of months trying to forget how much he missed Justin’s smile, his touch, his presence. But it was too late. So Brian did what he could to take care of Justin, to make sure he was provided for, to make sure he was okay, even as his efforts were rebuffed at every turn by the boy’s new boyfriend. All he really wanted was for Justin to be happy. Brian didn’t really care what it cost him -- emotionally or otherwise.

Justin seemed to be happy with Ethan for a while...until Brian ran into Justin at the bar, stacking up empty shot glasses as he drank himself into oblivion. Pain management. Brian knew it well. Justin had learned from the master.

A couple of weeks later, Justin sat in Brian’s office and laid out the reasons he felt Brian should take him back. And he did.

All these voices and decisions
Swimming circles in my head
All these choices and opinions
Feeling heavy as lead

Now, two years later, they’d been through so much together -- job loss, starting Kinnetik, Vic’s death...and a cancer diagnosis. He remembered trying to push Justin away, using the last of his waning energy one night to forcibly throw him out of the loft before collapsing against the wall, wondering what he’d just done. He knew why he’d done it -- because he didn’t want to have to bear witness to Justin loving him unconditionally. He didn’t deserve to be loved unconditionally.  Brian deserved to be alone. It was easier that way. Now, he was broken and diseased. He was missing a part of his manhood that had meant so much to the identity he’d built for himself. The identity that Justin saw right through from the beginning.

So he wasn’t surprised when Justin decided to fight for him -- when he came to the loft and made chicken soup while Brian was working and trying to pretend everything was okay when he really just wanted to dig a hole, crawl in, and die. Brian had wanted to kick Justin out again, but quickly found he didn’t have the energy and ended up on the floor after Justin shoved him. He took a moment to regroup, then launched himself back to his feet, shouting at Justin, hoping Justin would decide to go away on his own. This time, Justin shouted right back. He told Brian what a piece of shit he was, which really wasn’t news at all. Justin told him that he thought they had a commitment and he planned to honor it. And he told Brian to get his ass back in bed and eat some fucking chicken soup. At that particular moment, Brian didn’t have the energy to rebuild his walls, so he let Justin take care of him. He let himself feel loved for a while.

Things started to feel comfortable. They started to feel like a real couple, even though Brian would deny that every chance he got. Then Justin went to Los Angeles and Brian went on the Liberty Ride, where he had a lot of time to think as he rode a bicycle hundreds of miles one-handed through the pain of a broken collarbone. It wasn’t an easy trip to say the least, but through it he had realized that there was one thing he really wanted in this life -- Justin. It took him forever to say it, and he stalled by going on about the thing over the bed and Gus and Lindsay and Mel and Armani and football and engine tuning before he finally said what he wanted to say -- “I’d like us to live together.”

In that moment, Brian Kinney went out on a limb -- one he honestly never thought he’d tread. He took a risk for love, but he still couldn’t bring himself to say it out loud.

And I am not my mother or father
And I am not yesterday's son
I'm not broken, I'm a wide open highway
With room to run

A few weeks later, Justin went back to Los Angeles to work on the Rage film, and they were again left in limbo. Brian was okay with that -- if it was what Justin wanted and it made him happy, then that’s what was important. Brian’s own feelings be damned. Even when Justin told Brian he missed him over the phone, Brian couldn’t bring himself to say it back -- because that would make it real. He told himself Justin wasn’t coming back -- that it was for the best if he didn’t.

Because if Justin didn’t come back, then Brian wouldn’t have to entertain the idea of what the the expected “next steps” were in their relationship -- or listen to everyone else’s opinion on what those steps should be. Marriage, a house, babies. Imitation heterosexuality. Becoming Stepford Fags. After what he’d seen modeled as marriage, who could blame him? In Brian’s consciousness, marriage was a hateful institution, entered into out of convenience and guilt.

But Justin did come back. Rage would likely never be a film. These were conservative times. God was in, gays were out. Michael and Brian’s friendship was becoming strained, as Michael fully embraced the Stepford Fag lifestyle and Brian flaunted what he felt it meant to truly be queer -- to be ruled by pleasure, and to never be tied down. Ben and Michael bought a house. Brian bought Babylon.

The drawer in Brian’s bedroom was still empty when Justin asked if the offer still stood. So the loft became “theirs” once again. But Justin was becoming disillusioned with Brian’s lifestyle -- he seemed to want more. Justin told Brian he thought things would be different after they moved in together -- that they’d be a real couple, like Michael and Ben.

Brian came home one night, and Justin said he’d been thinking. Thinking about what he wanted. As Justin waxed eloquent about a couple who doesn’t want the same things and aren’t moving in the same direction having nowhere to go, Brian felt physically ill. He knew what Justin wanted. And he knew he couldn’t -- no, wouldn’t -- give it to him. As Justin stood in front of him, dropped his bags to the ground and wrapped him in a hug, Brian could feel the words in his throat, but he couldn’t get them out. So he let Justin go. Justin had walked out the door, and landed right in the middle of everything he wanted from Brian that Brian wouldn’t give, at Michael and Ben’s.

Later that night, Brian had landed on Michael and Ben’s doorstep, having engaged in a fair bit of pain management over the past few hours. Damned if it didn’t even have the desired effect though. He still felt like he’d been gutted. So he’d stormed in to give Michael a piece of his mind. He really hadn’t wanted to hear what Michael had to say, but Michael said it anyway.

“He was never perfectly happy! Waiting for years for you to say, ‘I love you, you’re the only one I want.’ … He didn’t leave because I infected him -- he left because of you! Who wouldn’t?”

Michael had never wounded Brian so deeply. He stood there for a few seconds, stunned, before turning and walking out on his best friend of 20 years. Michael was right. Who wouldn’t leave someone who could never bring themselves to say “I love you,” who struggled to express affection? Someone who couldn’t admit to loving someone else because he’d never loved himself either.

In the middle of my story
All I want is to feel alive

When the news about the bombing at Babylon came across the radio, Brian felt like he’d been punched in the gut. He could give a shit less about his business -- his family was in there. His chosen family. He barked at the driver to turn the car around, then pulled out his cell phone and frantically punched at the buttons with shaking hands until he had successfully called Justin’s cell phone. No answer. He tried again. No answer. Sickening images were flashing through his head each time he dialed and got Justin’s voicemail. Justin burning alive. Justin’s lifeless eyes staring, blank and empty, through the smoke. Justin dead under a pile of rubble in what remained of Brian’s playground.

Brian shook his head to try to dislodge the garish images and jumped out of the car before it had even come to a complete stop when they finally reached the club. He had to find Justin.

He had hope for a fleeting moment when he saw Jennifer on the street outside. Surely Justin had been standing near her, and if she was okay, then he would be too. But Jennifer put Brian’s heart in a vise with the news that Justin was still in the building. He had to find him.

So Brian went in, pushing past the firefighters, ignoring their orders to leave the building. The stench of smoke burned his nostrils as he looked around the room frantically, shouting Justin’s name over the blaring fire alarm. He didn’t even recognize the room in its current state. There was debris everywhere, small fires still burning, and blood and bodies scattered on the floor. He was petrified to look into their lifeless eyes, for fear that he’d recognize them. He ran into Ted and his date, but they hadn’t seen Justin. Brian called Justin’s name desperately as he searched, covering his mouth with his hands, not sure if he was trying to keep himself from breaking down or from throwing up as he looked up at a lifeless body on the catwalk overhead.

Then, there was a sudden shower of sparks, and Justin emerged from behind it. Brian took Justin into his arms, then pulled back to look at the right side of Justin’s head, which was covered in blood. Panic coursed through Brian for a moment as he feared Justin had been hit in the head again. But Justin said he wasn’t hurt; they were just scratches. Brian believed him. He couldn’t entertain the thought of any of the alternatives right now.

Emmett appeared soon after, seemingly as relieved as Brian had been to find Justin. Now there was just one person missing: Michael. Brian went outside alone, where he saw a blackened and bloody Michael on a stretcher, being loaded into an ambulance. Brian felt like his world was crashing to a halt. Michael couldn’t die.

Ben rode with Michael in the ambulance. Brian brought Debbie to the hospital, where he paced restlessly, remembering how he’d tried to apologize to Michael at the art gallery. Well, sort of tried to apologize. The kind of half-assed apology that was Brian Kinney’s specialty -- trying to charm you into submission without every really admitting fault. It hadn’t worked. Michael had told him that just because they’d been friends their whole lives, that was no reason to continue being friends. The Brian and Michael show was over. Michael might as well have reached right into Brian’s chest, torn his heart out and stomped it right there on the floor, because that’s exactly what his words had done.

Now, their venomous, hateful exchanges over the last few weeks were playing on an endless loop inside Brian’s head. Asking Michael when he’d become a pious, judgmental twit. Calling Michael’s married life a farce and a freakshow. “Apologizing” by way of telling Michael he could be a Stepford Fag if he wanted to be one. As Brian paced the floor of the waiting room at the hospital, he would have given anything to rewind back to that moment in the gallery and give Michael a real apology -- the one he deserved.

He could tell Michael that he loved him. Always had, always will. Brian wasn’t sure why saying “I love you” to Michael was so easy -- why it was different. Why the words flowed off his tongue with Michael but felt stuck in his throat with Justin. He wasn’t sure if it was the fact that Michael had seen him in his most vulnerable moments, or that their friendship had spanned so many different time periods in their lives and continued to grow and evolve along with them, or if it was just that with Michael he had always felt safe. Like nothing could touch him.

Now, Michael was laying in a hospital bed, fighting for his life. They took him into surgery, not knowing if he’d come out of it alive. Debbie had threatened God as Brian sat with her in the hospital’s chapel, tears in his eyes and his voice caught in his throat. At this stage, there was nothing he could do. He couldn’t save Michael. This was out of his hands. He had to trust that it would all come out okay, but given his tenuous relationship with the man upstairs, he wasn’t so sure it would.

All he could do was hope and pray that he’d get the chance to give Michael a proper apology, and to tell him that he loved him -- always had, always will.

And I am not my mother or father
And I am not yesterday's son
I'm not broken, I'm a wide open highway
With room to run

Feeling utterly useless at the hospital, Brian decided to head back to Babylon. The overwhelming regret he felt over how he’d been treating Michael weighed heavy on his mind as he approached the chaos of the crime scene, where the rotating spotlights he’d rented to draw attention to the benefit combined with the red and blue flashing lights of the emergency vehicles on the street.

He and Justin gravitated toward each other, and Brian couldn’t hide any longer.

“I was so fucking scared,” he said, his voice breaking. “All I could think was, please don’t let anything happen to him.”

Then, the words just spilled out of him effortlessly as they embraced. In that moment, all of the fears he had about letting Justin see him for who he really was evaporated into the night with three little words. The words Justin had waited so long to hear were uttered softly into his ear.

“I love you.”

Justin looked at Brian as if he didn’t believe what he was hearing, so Brian said it again for good measure.

“I love you.”

This time, Justin had tears in his eyes as he kissed Brian, and stood on his tiptoes to pull Brian into a tight embrace in the middle of the street. The very same street where they’d first made eye contact nearly 6 years ago. Where the story of Brian -- alone -- ended, and the story of Brian and Justin began.