I've lost my balance 
I fell from the trapeze 
This act isn't easy 
I've been under water 
This storm has been raging 
These nights I'm not sleeping 
My dreams are now strangers to me

This was a dark place. Really fucking dark. And not a place Brian Kinney ever thought he’d be. This was why he didn’t do boyfriends. He didn’t do love. He didn’t do commitment. Because when you do boyfriends...love...commitment...you let yourself get attached. When you do boyfriends, you hope and pray they won’t ever leave you. Because if they do, you’ll feel like your soul has been torn out and you have nothing left to live for. That’s exactly where Brian was at this moment.

Brian rolled over in bed, alone, thankful it was Saturday so he didn’t have to make a decision between calling in “sick” or going into work and faking it -- pretending that everything was okay when it was anything but. He was sick of putting on a mask every day -- the mask he wore for others’ benefit as much as his own. He didn’t need them worrying about him, trying to pull him out of the dark place that had become almost comfortable at this point.

Brian just wanted to be left alone. He didn’t want to see anyone. He knew he was isolating himself, and had been for most of the past two months, but he didn’t really want to do anything about it. He was intelligent enough to know that this was depression -- he was so damn tired all the time that all he wanted to do was sleep, and absolutely nothing interested him anymore.

For the first month after Justin left, Brian had poured all of his energy into rebuilding Babylon, after deciding not to sell. After all, if they weren’t moving to West Virginia and he wasn’t going to marry Justin, what was the point in selling his playground? Once that was done, he found he had nowhere to focus his energy now except for the loneliness that had been lingering in the background the whole time, and he let himself get dragged down into this dark abyss that felt like it had no bottom.

Hell, he wasn’t even interested in going out to Woody’s anymore. Going to Babylon reminded him too much of dancing with Justin, or giving each other blow jobs in the back room, so he was content to let his staff run things and took a hands-off approach when it came to the club. And then there was Kinnetik, his baby. His ad agency that Justin had given a name to. The job he’d always been so wrapped up in now felt like he was just going through the motions, counting down the minutes until 5 p.m., when he could go home and drink Jim Beam straight from the bottle and miss his lover in peace.

Brian cursed his “if you love something, let it go” philosophy and where it had gotten him this time. He knew that Justin needed a chance to strike out on his own, be his own man. To see if he could make a living as an artist in New York. So Brian let him go, because his own life was here in Pittsburgh...and besides, why would Justin want to be saddled with a partner -- or husband -- 12 years his senior when he moved to a brand new city in an effort to find himself and see what he could become. Brian felt like this was the sacrifice he had to make. It was one he made out of love, even if he struggled to admit that he could feel such a thing.

And I need you now 
There's too many miles on my bones 
I can't carry the weight of the world 
No, not on my own

He knew he probably needed some professional help at this point. It had been three months now since Justin had quietly slid his body out from under Brian’s in their bed, and left for the airport to catch his flight to New York. Brian had pretended to be asleep. He wasn’t, but the mattress was a convenient place to deposit the tears he didn’t want to be crying in the first place, and he definitely didn’t want Justin -- or anyone else -- to see him cry. So he’d just laid there, trying to keep his breath steady and even, while the love of his life walked out the door to start a new life, without him.

Besides, Brian Kinney didn’t show emotion. He didn’t care about anyone but himself. Just a selfish prick. That persona felt so foreign at this point. There was no denying that it would have kept him safer if he’d managed to keep those walls up and not let Justin in, but at what cost? How would things have been different?

He couldn’t go back and change the past, but even if he could, the future would have been so different. Sure, he might have saved himself the turmoil he was going through right now, but what else would he have missed out on in the meantime? He couldn’t deny how it felt to hold Justin in their bed after a good fuck. How it felt to join their lips together in a passionate kiss. How much he missed running his fingers through Justin’s soft blond locks. The feel of Justin’s warm body beside him in the bed. How he loved just gazing into Justin’s eyes -- seemingly endless pools of deep blue.

Brian tried to shake the memories out of his mind as he shuffled into the kitchen for a glass of water, his head pounding with a hangover from all of the whiskey he’d consumed the night before. He knew he was self medicating, but it was what he’d always done. He managed his pain with alcohol, drugs, and sex. But this time, he didn’t feel like sex. There were too many memories at Babylon to go there and try to pick up some hard drugs, and he still didn’t feel like going to Woody’s because then he’d have to face his friends. With sex and drugs off the table, that left alcohol to stand alone.

Michael would come by the loft sometimes to check on him. There was only one person who knew him better than Michael did, and that person was almost 400 miles away. As much as Brian wanted to ignore Michael’s knocking on the big, metal door, he knew Michael wouldn’t go away that easily. Besides, Michael had a key and would eventually force his way in, leaving Brian with a lot more explaining to do than if he just answered the door and pretended to be coping at least halfway okay with the situation.

So the mask would go back on, he’d let Michael in, and they’d sit on the couch and talk. Most of the time, Brian managed to make believable enough small talk to satisfy Michael so he’d go on his way. This time was different.

“How are you?”

“Peachy.”

“You don’t look peachy.”

“I’m fabulous, Mikey,” Brian insisted, trying his best to make his voice sound confident, or at least aloof. “You don’t have to take care of me you know. I’m not your responsibility. Go back to your husband and your happy little family. I’ll be alright.”

“Yeah, I can see that,” Michael said, his voice laden with sarcasm. “You look like you haven’t slept in weeks.”

“I haven’t.” The words were out of Brian’s mouth before he could stop them -- probably his subconscious trying to unload some of this burden onto someone else, and Michael was here, so he was it. “Not really.”

“What’s going on?”

“What the hell do you think is going on, Michael?” Might as well go for broke now, he thought, as he stood up to loom at his full height over Michael’s smaller form sitting on his Italian leather sofa. “Do I have to spell it out for you? I fucking loved him, okay. It might have taken me forever to say it out loud, but I’ve loved him for a long time. And he fucking left me.”

“You were the one who insisted he should go, remember?”

“You think I don’t remember? Believe me Michael, I know. And I regret it every single fucking day!”

Michael looked struck by the fact that Brian had admitted this out loud, but his expression was devoid of any sort of surprise. Brian knew Michael had his number on this one.

“Ted said you’ve been calling in sick to work a lot lately."

Brian shrugged as he sank back down onto the sofa and put his aching head in his hands.

“Maybe you should call Justin. Or go visit him.”

“No,” Brian looked up at Michael. “He’s got his own life, and he doesn’t need me or his old life here in Pittsburgh weighing him down. Don’t you go calling him either, or I’ll never speak to you again.”

Michael sighed. “You’re not okay. You can’t fool me, Brian. I’ve known you for too long. I know you’re not a recluse. Why are you avoiding us anyway?”

Brian stared straight ahead at the blank television screen, not really knowing the answer to Michael’s question.

“I’m worried about you,” Michael continued, his voice barely above a whisper. “We all are. I wish you’d talk to somebody.”

Your eyes are like lightning 
Your voice is like water 
This place is a desert 
I've been walking in circles 
I'm screaming for answers 
I might fall into pieces 
Or maybe I'm finally breaking through

Begrudgingly, Brian had agreed to make an appointment with a psychiatrist, even though he still felt like the whole shrink thing was bullshit. He was mostly doing it for Michael -- so Michael would leave him the fuck alone. He went into it thinking he’d probably get nothing out of it -- he much preferred the familiarity of drowning his sorrows in whiskey -- but again, he knew Michael well enough to know that his friend did not give up easily. And he’d already screwed up when he admitted to Michael how fucked up he really was.

He also had Kinnetik to consider. By now he was feeling so off his game that his work was suffering, and things were starting to fall apart. He couldn’t lose his livelihood too.

So he went, and it did help, at least a little...to verbalize to a neutral third-party exactly how he was feeling, even if he didn’t always like her questions or know how to answer them without sounding like some kind of sad sack lunatic. He went to see her once a week, to sit on her couch and look surly and act like he wanted to be anywhere other than right there at that moment. But he was honest with her. She was trying to help, and he figured he at least owed her that much.

Then she asked him the question that nearly made him fall apart right there on her sofa: “Can I ask you what’s stopping you from going to see him? What are you afraid of?”

Oh, only that Justin had moved on, realized that Brian wasn’t worthy of his affections, that Brian really was the piece of shit he’d been told his entire life he was -- by his parents, by his peers, even sometimes by the people who called themselves his friends. That the one person Brian had truly let all the way in, didn’t want him anymore. He’d been cast aside, left alone. Open and vulnerable. And that hurt to think about. Much less to put into words.

So he settled for, “I don’t know,” and went home. But being home meant being alone with those thoughts. He wanted to numb them with alcohol, but the fucking shrink had put him on an antidepressant and told him he needed to dispense with the heavy drinking. He wanted to say, fuck it, and dive in anyway, but he had to admit that the whiskey wasn’t really doing the trick anymore. It hadn’t been for a while. So he tried the pills -- anything to numb the constant ache caused by Justin’s absence.

Fucking Justin Taylor, still making Brian Kinney do things that Brian Fucking Kinney didn’t do, even when they were separated by the distance of the entire fucking state of Pennsylvania.

I need you now 
There's too many miles on my bones 
I can't carry the weight of the world 
No, not on my own

They hadn’t spoken in months -- not since Justin had called to tell Brian that he’d made it to New York okay, and that it was everything he thought it would be and more. He’d tried to sound happy for Justin, and he hoped he’d pulled it off. The last thing Brian wanted was Justin feeling burdened by the depression that was already settling into every fiber of Brian’s being by that point. Brian had been working on fucking up his own life all on his own for most of his 35 years, and it wasn’t Justin’s fault.

Then the phone rang one night, a little after 11:00, as Brian laid in bed trying to will himself into sleep, almost ready to fall back on the prescription sleeping pills sitting on his nightstand. The caller ID lit up the darkness with the words, “Taylor, Justin.” Brian wanted to ignore it, to let it go to the machine like he had every time for the past six months. Damned if that kid wasn’t just as persistent now as he had been as a 17-year-old one-night-stand that refused to go away. Justin kept calling and leaving messages at least once a week, even as the messages piled up and the calls went unreturned. Brian could have left the messages on the machine until it was full, so Justin wouldn’t be able to leave any more messages. But he enjoyed listening to Justin’s little life updates, even if it felt like he was being stabbed in the heart every time he heard Justin’s soft, gentle voice from across the loft, so he kept deleting the oldest message to allow a new one to be left.

Brian wasn’t sure why this time he decided to answer the call, but his finger was pressing the “Talk” button before he could stop himself.

“Hey.”

Justin was silent for a few seconds, obviously thrown off by the fact that Brian had answered, before he stuttered, “Um...hi. I was expecting to be leaving another message.”

Brian didn’t know what to say to Justin. He wanted to hang up without saying another word, but something kept him on the line.

“So, how’ve you been?” Justin asked brightly.

“I’ve been better.” No sooner had the words left his lips than Brian wished he hadn’t said them. He guessed this whole honesty thing with his shrink was really starting to get to him.

“Oh yeah? What’s up?”

Brian sighed and sank back into the pillows, willing his body to be swallowed up by the bed and disappear so he wouldn’t have to have this conversation. Not with Justin.

“Are you okay? You’re not sick again, are you? Did I wake you?” Concern started to seep into Justin’s voice. 

“No."

“Which one? You’re not okay? You’re not sick again? I didn’t wake you?”

“All three.”

“Brian…”

“This fucking sucks, Sunshine. I miss you.” The words were out of his mouth and down the line before he could stop them. He wished he could pull them back in. Who the fuck was this person and why was he saying these things? Brian Fucking Kinney didn’t admit that he missed people! It was as if his mouth had made some secondary connection to the area of his brain that he tried so hard to hide behind his wall of not-caring and false bravado, and his mouth was having none of Brian Fucking Kinney’s bullshit.

“I miss you too,” Justin said, his voice breaking a little.

Hearing Justin say those words was all it took. Before Brian even knew what was happening, tears were sliding down his face as he squeezed his eyes shut, pressed his thumb and forefinger to the bridge of his nose, and tried to keep his breath from hitching and making it obvious what was happening on the Pittsburgh end of the line.

“Brian…you can tell me… Please tell me what’s wrong,” Justin said, the tenderness and compassion evident in his voice.

It was at that moment that Brian’s tenuous grip on his emotions slipped, and his breathing dissolved into quiet sobs, just loud enough to be heard in New York. Fuck, fuck, fuck!

No more running, no more hiding 
No more hurting, no more crying 
No more trouble, no more sighing 
No more falling, no more striving 
No more heartache, no more fighting 
No more fears, only flying

The alarm clock said 12:06 p.m. when the loft door slid open and Brian wondered who was there. There were only three people other than Brian who had keys -- the cleaning lady, Michael, and Justin. It was the weekend, so it wouldn’t be the cleaning lady, and Brian knew Michael and Ben were off helping Hunter move into his college dorm. So that left Justin. But he was supposed to be in New York.

Soft footsteps could be heard nearing closer to the bedroom as Brian rolled over onto his back and rubbed his face roughly with his hands, hoping his eyes weren’t too swollen and red. He wasn’t prepared for this. Not now. Not today.

He heard Justin exhale a soft sigh as he walked up the three steps to the bedroom. Brian looked at him and blinked, still not sure if this was some kind of a dream or a hallucination -- the product of having finally taken some of the sleeping pills at 3 a.m. in an effort to quell the embarrassment and anxiety he’d felt at having gotten so emotional on the phone the night before.

But if this was a hallucination, it was a damn good one, because it sure as hell felt real when the mattress dipped as Justin climbed onto the bed and wrapped his body around Brian’s, whispering, “I love you,” in his ear.

“You’re really here,” Brian breathed. “It’s really you.”

“In the flesh.”

Brian let himself be pulled into Justin’s embrace, taking in the familiar scent of fruity shampoo and cheap bar soap.

“How’d you get here so fast?” Brian asked. “I didn’t think you’d be able to afford a plane ticket, since you never would take any help from me.”

“I called Michael. He bought the ticket.”

Brian sighed as he turned his head to look at Justin. “How much did you tell him?”

“I didn’t have to.”

Figures.

They laid on the bed together for several minutes, just breathing together, Brian wrapped in Justin’s arms, before Justin broke the silence.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Justin asked, his bright blue eyes pleading as he lifted his head up to look into Brian’s hazel ones, seemingly searching for answers.

Brian was quiet for several seconds before taking a deep breath to steel himself and answering, “How could I?”

“How could you what?”

“You were fucking blossoming, Sunshine. I could hear how happy you were in every single one of those messages you left on my machine. You didn’t need me bringing you down.”

“Brian, I love you,” Justin said as he hugged Brian tighter. “I never stopped. I never intended to stop."

No more running, no more hiding 
No more hurting, no more crying 
No more trouble, no more sighing 
No more falling, no more striving 
No more heartache, no more fighting 
No more fears, only flying

That conversation, and the seemingly never-ending pool of darkness Brian had once been mired in, felt so far away now, three months later, as they sat across from one another at the diner, eating breakfast just like they had most days for the five years they’d been together in Pittsburgh. Like nothing had ever happened. Like Justin had never been in New York, and Brian hadn’t nearly lost himself missing him.

“Are you sure you don’t want to stay in New York? I don’t want you holding yourself back on my account.”

“For the thousandth time, yes,” Justin insisted with a slightly annoyed sigh. “I can paint just as well in Pittsburgh as I can in New York. I have enough gallery contacts now that I’ll still be able to go back for shows, and on the plus side, the cost of living is lower, so I’ll have enough money to eat something other than ramen noodles,” he laughed.

“You can always work at Kinnetik, you know,” Brian said as he absently stirred his coffee, “Although I’d feel like I was wasting your talent.”

“I know I could. But I still need to stand on my own two feet -- I need to do that for me.” Justin paused. “Besides, I bet you’d be sick of me in a week if I was underfoot in the office all day.”

“Nah,” Brian laughed -- he’d almost forgotten how it felt to laugh. “Don’t forget about the benefits of inter-office relations. After all, you can get pretty far in life by blowing the boss.”

Justin rolled his eyes as Debbie came over to the table with their plates. “I’m still so happy to see you back, Sunshine,” she smiled at them as the bell rang again and she turned to walk back toward the counter to grab someone else’s order.

“I’m glad you’re back, too,” Brian said as he raised his gaze to meet Justin’s.

Justin reached across the table and placed his hand over Brian’s.

“I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else.”

No more running, no more hiding 
No more hurting, only flying 
No more trouble, no more sighing 
No more falling, only flying 
No more heartache, no more fighting 
No more fears, only flying