The One Where Justin Loses His Hearing

by LaVieEnRose

Chapter 1 - The One Where Justin Loses His Hearing

I don't think I would have noticed anything at first if Brian weren't teasing him about it. “Hey,” he'd say, when he'd have to repeat a question, or when Justin missed a joke a the diner. “You going deaf, old man?” He'd nibble on Justin's neck, right out in fucking public, but what else is new. “Do I need to trade you in for someone who can keep up with me?” And Justin would laugh and swat him and make that face he always does when Brian's a dick, that one where you can tell he hopes Brian keeps being a dick to him for the next five hundred years.

To tell the truth, even with Brian calling attention to it, I barely noticed. We had a lot on our plate, with moving Hunter into college three fucking states away, and Ben getting promoted to head of the department, and Rage selling more copies than ever before. I swear, Justin and I spent half our time just answering fan mail, from thousands upon thousands of queer kids who never even thought of seeing a superhero like them before. Justin thought that was the coolest thing, and obviously I didn't disagree. He and I were spending a lot of time together, maybe even more than me and Brian, so maybe I don't really have an excuse for not noticing anything was wrong.

But I still noticed before Brian did. Or maybe I just don't have Brian's strong sense of denial as far as anything wrong with Justin is concerned. One time, ages ago—like before the whole Ethan fiasco, which now feels like something that happened when we were kids, or like something somebody made up—Justin had a panic attack at Babylon, and Emmett and Ted and I were all over Brian and Justin trying to get them out of there or get Justin some water or something, and Brian was barking at us like we were the problem, holding Justin all close and growling, “He's fine, he's fine, he's fine,” like the idea of Justin not being fine was just completely not acceptable. And it's always been like that; if I make the mistake of telling Brian Justin's been having trouble with his hand, Brian just about bites my head off.

So maybe I've trained myself out of noticing when something seems off with Justin. Or maybe I'm just making excuses for being a self-centered prick. And maybe Brian really knew ages before me that something was wrong, and he was just pretending he didn't. But I don't know. He was busy too, supervising renovations on the loft, pulling in business left and right for Kinnetik, still going out five nights a week. And he and Justin were happy. Really happy, had been for years now. Maybe Brian thought he could keep anything from messing with that by sheer force of will. It'd worked so far, I guess.

And it was so subtle at first. I'd repeat myself to Justin all the time, struggle to get his attention when he was working on the comic, practically have to wave my hand in front of his face. “We oughta get you tested for ADD,” I probably said more than a couple times over however long that was...god, a month? More? I know Brian says it wouldn't have mattered, that there wasn't anything that they could have done, but it still seems like...I don't know, with Ben it's so important to stay on top of shit, to report to his doctors at the first sign something's not right.

I remember a few times I'd come into the loft with Brian and Justin would be there watching TV or listening to music, and Brian would make a face and ask him why it had to be on so fucking loud, and was he trying to get them evicted, and one time he even asked if all that thumpa thumpa had damaged his hearing already. And STILL, I didn't think anything of it, until one time me and him and Ben and Brian were all at Mel and Lindz's for dinner, and Mel and Ben and I were in the kitchen loading the dishwasher after dessert while the others were getting the kids to bed and Mel said, “Did something seem off with Justin?” and I swear the fucking hairs stood up on the back of my neck.

“He has seemed kind of spacey lately,” Ben said, and he had and I had never talked about it or anything, and I just got this really bad feeling about the fact that we'd both noticed something separately, even though I hadn't even really been AWARE that I'd noticed it. I guess that's proof right there that I might have been in denial just as bad as Brian was.

Except even I wasn't prepared for what Mel said next, because I was thinking it was something with his PTSD or whatever, like Justin was disappearing into his memory or having flashbacks, and then Mel went and said, “Do you think there's something wrong with his hearing?”

Jesus. Like PTSD isn't scary enough, right? And he and Brian were just hanging out in the living room groping each other like everything was fine.

I don't even know when Justin realized things weren't right. If he already knew.

I guess it's fucked up I never thought about that before.

**

After that dinner at Melanie and Lindsey's I kind of started...testing Justin. Nothing major, I'd just drop something light behind him when he was working on the comic book, or say his name quietly when he was looking away from me, things like that. I didn't really get much out of it. It seemed like sometimes he noticed and sometimes he didn't, and anyway Justin's always been the type to go off somewhere in his head when he's working, or thinking about working, or thinking about thinking about working. Brian's always throwing stuff at him.

So since my tests were doing nothing, I finally bit the bullet and mentioned it to Brian, when he came by the store one day after work. He was fucking with all my arrangements like always, making Captain America figurines go down on the Batman ones, same shit, different day. “So how's Justin?” I said, all carefully.

Brian didn't look up from angling the Cap's head. “Didn't you see him yesterday?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, he's just about the same. Mister Universe here could really stand to take a yoga class. Come on, hero, BEND those knees.”

“Brian.”

“Yyyyes?”

I took a deep breath. “Is something wrong with Justin?”

He turned around with that look he gives me when he wants me to shut up. Like I'm so fucking stupid that he can't figure out how I'm even saying words to begin with.

“Justin's fine,” he said. “He's working hard. His hand gets tired.”

“I'm not talking about his hand.”

He tightened his jaw. “Justin,” he said. “Is fine.”

So I let it go. Because in terms of everything else, Justin did seem totally normal. He wasn't depressed, or cranky, or quiet. He came up with new ideas for the comic, and taught Ben this stir fry recipe he got from his mom, and he and Brian were still showing up to the diner looking as worn out and sweaty as ever. Maybe I was making mountains out of molehills. Ben's always telling me I tend to do that.

Then about two weeks later, we had a meeting with this lawyer about a copyright thing for Rage. It was beyond stupid; the plotline in our last issue had the most superficial similarity to some comic from the '80s that even I had never heard of, and now the creators of that wanted some kind of compensation, so we had to meet with their lawyer. Justin hates shit like that and probably would have blown up the whole meeting with some rant about artistic integrity and how nothing is really new or some shit like that, and anyway we needed someone to stay with JR and Gus since Melanie and Lindsey were out of town for their anniversary and they were both staying with Ben and me, and Ben wanted to be at the meeting, and Brian was being Justin's proxy or whatever...anyway, all of that's a long way of saying that Justin stayed at our place alone with the kids one evening.

Brian was right that the whole meeting was bullshit, and we agreed to pay the creator a hundred and fifty dollars and it all went away, so that was fine. When we got home, Justin was on the floor playing with Gus. The baby monitor was on the coffee table next to him, and we could all hear JR crying quietly through it.

“How long has she been up?” Ben asked, and Justin looked with confusion first at him,and then the baby monitor.

Or, almost all of us could hear it.

Ben went to check on JR, and I said, really gently, “Didn't you hear that, Justin?”

“No, of course I heard it, I just thought...” He shrugged and looked quickly back at the blanket, said something to Gus, I don't remember.

I just remember I looked at Brian, and he was chewing his thumbnail and staring at Justin, his expression totally blank in that Brian way that means everything. And I knew then for sure that he was really worried. That he'd been worried for a long time.

And then he kind of shook himself off and went and pulled Justin off the floor. He kissed him and said, “Let's go home,” and kind of pulled Justin out the door. And if I didn't know better I'd say the way he put an arm around his waist was almost...protective. But of course I know better.

Better than to say anything, anyway.

**

I don't know how long after that Justin and Brian went to the doctor. They didn't give anything away to us; nobody mentioned the incident at our house, and they kept acting totally normal. But then eventually they sat us all down as a group and told us that Justin had a genetic disease and within a year he was going to lose a hundred percent of his hearing. There was some surgery they could have done once he lost it all, but the doctors said with the bashing it was too dangerous to go digging around in Justin's brain. So basically he was just going to be completely deaf, for the rest of his life. And they were so fucking matter of fact about it! You could tell they'd known for weeks. I don't know how they kept going acting like nothing was wrong.

Maybe that's why they finally told us. They just got tired of keeping up appearances. Because after the announcement, Justin canceled our next two dates to work on the comic book, and I stopped seeing Brian anywhere outside of Babylon. It reminded me of when I came back from Portland and Brian was tricking without any life in his eyes. If I didn't know better I would have thought they'd broken up again. I even freaked out and called the loft one time when I knew Brian was at the office late to see if it went to the machine, but Justin was there, of course, and he sounded fine. And after that, he started showing up again, at the shop, at the diner with Brian, at the bar, and everyone acted totally normal.

Except...if you really paid attention, you could tell something was different between Brian and Justin, usually just at the end of the night. They always went home together, and that wasn't new, but there was something...I don't know, desperate about it, I guess? The way they'd grab at each other, hold each other on the dance floor, start tearing at each other's clothes because they even got to the fucking car...it was like they were so afraid it was going to be their last night together, or something. It would have been sweet if you didn't know what was going on.

And honestly, it was easy to forget a lot of the time. Justin didn't act much different. If you were really looking for it, you could see him watching your lips when you were talking sometimes, and sometimes he kind of got lost if everyone was talking at once, but he always seemed so embarrassed and tried to hide it, so it's not like I was going to say anything. After a while I noticed Brian had this habit of slowing people down, if we started talking all at once. “I can't fucking listen to all of you at the same time,” he'd say, and everyone knew what he was doing, but obviously we didn't call him on it. I remember one time we'd been working on the comic and Brian came to pick him up, and the phone started ringing while I was in the back. I asked Justin to grab it, and Brian snatched it up and sent me death glares across the room. I hadn't realized it before then, but I probably hadn't heard him talk on the phone since that time I called him at the loft. And I hadn't even thought twice about doing it, either!

It got to the point where it was practically impossible to have a conversation with Justin when Brian was around, not because of the hearing loss, but just because Brian was all the fuck over you controlling what you said and watching Justin to make sure no one upset him and basically being his typical control freak self turned up to eleven. And Justin acted like he didn't notice, but it had to be driving him crazy, having Brian micromanage all his social interactions like that.

So whenever Justin and I were alone I'd try to check on him, kind of push the little Do Not Mention It boundaries Brian was enforcing, but Justin always acted like he had no idea what I was talking about. “I'm fine,” he'd say, with this look like I was being crazy. “Don't I look fine?”

But one week he bailed out of meeting some PIFA students who wanted to interview us, which before he'd been really excited about, and then the day after the interview was supposed to happen Brian showed up at the shop instead of him and said Justin wasn't coming today. And he seemed just...tired, like his guard was down for the first time since all this shit came crashing into their lives.

“Is he okay?” I said.

I was expecting him to glare at me, and he did, for a second, and then he looked away and shrugged. His fingernails scraped at the glass on the display case. “He had a doctor's appointment the other day and...it's progressing faster than they thought it would.”

“Shit,” I said.

He shrugged again. “It was going to get there sooner or later. I don't know why it matters if we just cut down on the fun anticipatory part,” and I could tell by his voice he didn't mean a word of it. He just looked so...open, I don't know how to describe it. Like all of this was just cutting him open.

I didn't know what to say.

Brian ran his hand over his face. “He's fucking miserable.”

“He seems like he's handling it all okay,” I said. “You're the one who's on edge all the time. He's like the same old Justin.”

He looked at me like I was an idiot.

It was one of those moments where I was so sure I was never, ever going to really understand the two of them and what went on when I wasn't around. I don't know when they developed their secret little world—hell, maybe it started the first night Brian took him home—but there was no going back now, that was for sure. And not that I wanted them to, most of the time, though it was hard to see Brian standing there looking like he used to after he fought with his dad and not...I don't know. He's my best friend and he was hurting. Sometimes even the Epic Magic of Brian and Justin can't shake that out of my brain.

We stopped by the diner and got something to eat, and Brian talked about his new account and about Gus and and the new issue of Rage and the new hot guy at Babylon and basically anything in the world besides Justin losing his hearing, and I let him. Ma gave us a big care package to bring home to Justin, and at the last minute Brian said I should come back to the loft with them. He said Justin would like to see the mock-ups for the new issue, even if he didn't feel up to going out. “It's just easier for him when he can control the environment,” Brian said, and it took everything in me not to make some joke about Justin learning THAT one from the master.

When we got up to the loft, Justin was lying on the couch with his eyes closed and ear buds in, listening to music loudly enough that we could hear it before we'd even opened the door to the loft. Brian jiggled his foot and Justin opened his eyes, took out the earbuds.

“Hey,” he said. “Hey, Michael.”

“We brought food,” Brian said. “You're going to fucking eat. And Michael has some...thing for you to look at.”

I tried to smile at him. “Hey, Justin.”

He and I sat down and started looking at the mock-ups while Brian plated the food in the kitchen, but a minute later, he stopped while he was shuffling around the bags and said, “Justin, what the fuck is this?” Justin didn't even pause in his explanation to me of what's wrong with the layout, so I knew he didn't hear him.

Brian threw a French Fry at him.

Justin turned around. “Jesus, what?”

Brian held up this small paper bag, the kind you get from the pharmacy, waiting for an explanation.

Justin sighed. “I just...didn't feel like it.”

“You said you wanted to be alone to try them out, you said go for a walk, get the fuck out, and you were going to test them out. They're still in the fucking packaging.”

“Yeah, like I said, I didn't feel like it.”

“You're never going to feel like it.”

“Just fuck off, Brian,” Justin said.

I said, maybe I should go, but they acted like they didn't hear me. Or one of them acted, anyway.

Brian closed his eyes, and I could practically see him counting to ten. “I am trying to help you,” he said, his voice even, forced. “I'm going to eight million doctor's appointments. I'm running to the pharmacy every five minutes. I've called your fucking grandmother for you. I am here, in the flesh, being the motherfucking partner of your dreams, so you're going to stop being a drama queen and try the fucking hearing aids.”

“It's too soon,” Justin said. “I don't need them yet.”

“Then what the fuck did we go to the doctor for, Justin? If you're not going to do anything he says—”

“He's being overly cautious,” Justin said. “It's too early.”

“Overly cautious because he doesn't want you to walk in front of another fucking car.”

“That was one time,” Justin said, and he turned back around like he was going to get back to work on the mock-ups.

“Don't you...” Brian crossed the loft in three steps and pulled Justin up by his shirt. “Could you fucking look at me when I'm talking to you?”

“I don't want to look at you.”

“Well, too fucking bad, because you won't WEAR THE FUCKING HEARING AIDS!”

I wonder all the time how loud that sounded to Justin. If he could hear his voice ringing through the loft the way I could.

I started packing up our shit to get the hell out of there. “I'll see you guys later,” I said. I touched Justin's arm so he'd know, I don't know, that I was leaving? That he didn't deserve to be yelled at like that? I don't know. But he looked at me and smiled a little. I don't know if Brian even registered that I was still there.

I paused for a minute on my way out, before I closed the door all the way. He was just holding Justin at this point, his hands around his neck, his forehead tucked against his. He pulled back just enough so Justin could see his lips and said, “I cannot keep being this fucking...I cannot be this fucking scared all the time, Justin, I can't fucking do it, I can't...”

Justin wrapped his arms around his waist. “Okay,” he said. “Okay.”

I heard them kissing as I slid the door shut.

The next morning I had a text from Brian: “He's wearing them. Don't fucking say anything about it.” I don't know what his plan was to keep everyone else from saying anything. God knows Ma would be all over him like they were the greatest thing she'd ever seen.

Justin came in and gave me a small smile and got straight to work without a lot of small talk. I kept trying not to look at the hearing aids, but then that made me want to look at them, and then I didn't want to act like I was deliberately not looking at him, so that made me look at them, and then I'd try to look away, and the whole thing was a fucking mess and he'd only been there for like ten minutes.

“I know,” he said finally. “I look weird.”

“Actually, I think they look kind of cool,” I said honestly. “You kind of look like a superhero.”

He blushed and ducked his head and said, “You are such a freak, Michael.”

**

Not long after that he and Brian started taking classes to learn sign language. It seemed like they were both picking it up pretty quickly, and they always wanted to show off for us and teach us some things. I made some comment to Brian once about how they must be almost fluent by now, and Brian shook his head and said fluency took something like FIVE YEARS, and how the grammar was completely different from English, and I started freaking out because at that point Justin's hearing was supposed to be completely gone in less than six months. What the fuck where they going to do?

“It's not like we need to be fluent right away to get by,” Brian said. “And I know all the essentials. 'Take your clothes off, bend over...'”

“Justin likes to talk,” I said.

“He'll still be able to talk,” Brian said. “I'll still be able to hear him.”

That made me feel pretty stupid, but I guess I'd kind of forgotten that. That Justin had to learn this whole language just so people could talk to him, but he didn't even have to use it to talk. Something about that was just so fucking sad to me, I don't know why. I guess it hit me how isolated he was going to be. That only the people who knew him and took the time to learn a whole new language were going to be able to communicate with him.

So I started paying more attention to their little lessons at the diner, and I bought a book and watched some videos. There was no fucking way I was ever going to be fluent—I took four years of Spanish in high school and all I remember is how to ask what the weather is—but I wanted to try.

“You know what's fucked up?” I said to Brian one time, at the diner.

Brian raised an eyebrow over his omelette.

“I get why you have to learn sign language, and me and everything,” I said. “But it just seems totally fucked that Justin has to learn it. It seems like he should just magically...know it, like it should be his consolation prize for having to deal with this shit. Like it shouldn't be allowed to take his language away from him without giving him a new one.”

I was so ready for him to tell me that that was fucking stupid, but he just chuckled a little and said, “I said that exact same thing to him last week.”

I practically burst out laughing. “What did he say?”

“He told me I was fucking stupid,” Brian said, with the world's most affectionate smile, I swear to God, and I didn't have to ask if it was for me or for Justin. I'm not the one who's fucking stupid!

About a month later stuff started progressing more quickly, and it seemed like Brian and Justin were spending all their time shuttling back and forth to the doctor, trying to find meds Justin wasn't allergic to that would help with symptoms like dizziness and migraines that were hitting him all the time now. Periodically he would lose all the hearing in one of his ears, and it always came back, but it was definitely freaking them out. Justin had this look he'd give Brian when it happened, and Brian would always get them the fuck out of wherever they were. Which was usually Babylon. Yep, the old stomping ground was back to being their number-one hangout, and even though they both still tricked sometimes, I rarely saw them go into the back room even together; they'd just stay out in the middle of the floor, dancing for hours, and then disappearing when the sun came up to go to another fucking doctor.

Brian was hanging out in the shop midday one time when our checks for Rage came in. I went ahead and gave him Justin's, and, while I was handing it over it occurred to me that all this shit going on with Justin must be really fucking expensive and it's not like he had health insurance through school anymore. So I said, “Do you guys need, uh, an advance on the next issue?” as I handed the check over.

Brian chuffed out a laugh and straightened his cuffs. “You know this is Prada, right? Do I look like I'm struggling, Mikey? Were you not listening when I told you about my new account? I asked if you were listening. I give you a chance to tell me you're not listening...”

“Justin's medical stuff must be expensive,” I said. “I figured you were helping him out.”

Brian rolled his eyes. “No, I figured I'd let the little pup put himself hundreds of thousands of dollars into debt instead. He's my partner, Michael. It's not 'helping him out.'”

“Okay then, well I figured—”

“It's taken care of,” he said.

“Even you don't have the cash on hand to pay this shit out of pocket,” I said.

“Oh, and a bonus from your little comic book is gonna change that?”

I glared at him all through handing a customer change for an issue of Wonder Woman and a pack of gum. Finally, he sighed.

“It's not out of pocket,” Brian said. “He's on my insurance.”

“Jeez, how'd you swing that?”

And the thing is, if he'd just said some line about how he wrote the policy for Kinnetik so he could decide it or some shit, I totally would have bought it! I wouldn't have sat down and gone, “Hey, wait a minute, that doesn't make sense.” I would have totally believed whatever bit of bullshit he fed me, but instead he just stood there looking so fucking guilty!

“Holy shit,” I said. “When?”

He shrugged.

“Brian, when?”

“Right after we found out,” he said.

“Holy...and you didn't tell me?”

“Don't go trying to find us a house in your neighborhood,” Brian said. “It's business. It would have been totally fucking stupid not to do it.”

Only Brian Kinney could get married to the love of his fucking life and call it BUSINESS.

**

Justin started feeling pretty shitty all the time soon after that. He'd come by my house or the store to work on the comic and half the time just end up crashing on the couch. He was having these bouts of nausea too that Brian said reminded him of when he had cancer, so that was a fun trip down memory lane for all of us.

His hearing was pretty much garbage at that point, even though they kept turning up the hearing aids. At some point we all knew they'd stop working completely, when his brain would just forget how to process sound or whatever, and that would be it. They got really dedicated to their sign language classes, whenever Justin wasn't feeling too sick for it. With us, Justin still talked, and still seemed like he got most of what we were saying, but Brian threw a lot of signs in while they were talking, and it was hard not to notice that Justin responded a lot more to that than he did to us. I'd done enough reading to know that if you're doing sign language right, you never do it while you're talking, but I think they were less worried about being correct and more worried about just fucking getting by, and who could really blame them for that?

And sometimes Brian would sign to him without talking, and Justin would grin, and probably that was because it was something dirty, but maybe it was also just because they liked having their own secret language, this thing they could pull out in public and no one would even know. Or maybe they were just talking shit about us right in front of us.

One night Justin and I were working late at the shop, and he was putting up a good front but I could tell he was feeling like total trash. I tapped him on the shoulder and asked him in sign language—I told you I was practicing!—if he wanted to go lie down for a while, and he said yeah. I didn't know if he'd be able to actually sleep, since the air conditioner back there wasn't working right so it was making a shit ton of noise that I figured even he could probably hear, but it would probably be helpful for his balance just to get horizontal for a little while, and besides, I didn't need him to do the text layouts anyway.

He'd been lying down for about twenty minutes when he went, “Michael?” and God, his voice just sounded...wrong. And I knew. I knew right away.

I went to the back room and he was sitting on the couch, breathing hard, and he looked so fucking lost, like he'd never seen this place before. “Can you call Brian,” he said, and the way he was searching my face it's like he was scared I would say no, fuck.

I didn't want to leave him back there. I don't know, it just suddenly seemed so fucking imperative that I not leave him by himself. So I helped him up from the couch and I held his hand out to the front. I don't know why—it's not like he'd lost his ability to walk—but the way he clung to me made me feel like it was the right call. I sat him back in his place at the counter and turned away from him when I called Brian. I didn't want him to know if Brian was freaking out, but Justin wasn't looking at me anyway. He had his head in his arms, down on the counter.

“I'm busy,” Brian said, by way of hello.

“You need to get down here right the fuck now.”

And he was just fucking ironically silent.

“What happened?” he said eventually, but his voice wasn't asking a question. He knew.

“It happened,” I said anyway. “You have to get the fuck here, he needs you, I don't know what the fuck to do.”

There was this pause that was just fucking...awful. And I know Brian. I know what was going through his head in that moment.

But he said, “I'll be right there. Fuck, Michael, tell him I'll be right there. Make sure he fucking knows I'm coming, okay? Promise me.”

I promised him, but once I got off the phone it's like all the sign language I'd tried to learn had totally fallen out of my head. I just squeezed Justin's wrist until he looked up at me and nodded and smiled a little, and I think that was enough.

Brian was there in five minutes, sweaty and disheveled as hell, and I wondered if he'd even had time to get the trick out of the loft before he got out of there. But he put this...this game face on, and he strode over to Justin and tapped him on the shoulder and pulled him up into his arms. Justin was clinging, but Brian pulled back a little and gave him this smile, and even though I knew it was held together with tape and pure willpower, God, I just felt this sense of calm, and he wasn't even smiling at me.

Let's go home he signed to Justin.

I didn't hear Justin's voice again for two months.

**

It turned out they had to go to the hospital instead, Brian explained to us the next day. The doctors needed to check him over and make sure it was permanent, that this wasn't some temporary thing they could reverse. And even after they were sure that this was it, it was really gone, they wanted to run an MRI and some blood tests and stuff to figure out why it progressed faster than they'd thought—he was supposed to have had weeks left, a nurse mentioned to me—so they ended up keeping him overnight.

We all went to visit him, and Brian was a rock, sitting on the bed next to Justin, signing some stuff to him that people were saying, letting Justin kind of smile and drift out of the conversation when he wanted to. Justin wasn't talking at all, which we didn't realize at the time was going to be the new normal. After all, how many times had he assured us that he'd still be able to talk to us, we just wouldn't be able to answer?

Everyone held it together okay, but eventually we were all saying goodnight and kissing Justin and telling him we loved him, and something just...changed in Brian, I don't know how to describe it. It was like he'd been punched or something. He did a decent job of hiding it, but...it was like all of a sudden a light went out, or something. He kissed Justin's temple and carefully got out of bed and then walked out of that room like it was on fire.

I didn't know if I should follow him, but Justin gave me this look like, well?, so I went. Brian was still moving fast, down hallway after hallway, until finally he just stopped with his forehead against the wall and...fuck, it's been years and years since I've seen him cry like that.

After Justin was bashed, we sat for ages, and it felt like he was never going to stop crying, but it was slow and quiet, like he didn't even realize he was doing it, like it was just breathing. This was shaky and desperate, like when we were kids, and I couldn't for the life of me figure out what the fuck had just happened. I guess I thought it had all just hit him eventually, but when I put my hand on his shoulder he flinched and turned to me and said, “I was going to tell him, I had it all planned out, they...they told me I had weeks,” and oh God, I knew.

“Brian, he knows,” I said. “You've been together for six years. You fucking married him, for God's sake. He knows.”

But that just made it worse. “He's NEVER going to hear it!” he yelled. “Do you get that? He is fucking NEVER going to hear me say it, and it would have...I was waiting for the right time, they promised me WEEKS, I'm going to sue this fucking hospital, and I could have just...I should have...it would have taken me two fucking seconds, and I screwed it up, I fucked it up, and now he never gets to...”

And what could I even fucking say? How do you make that better? I just held him for a while, and we both cried, and I kept telling him, “He knows. He knows,” because I didn't know what the fuck else to say.

Brian pulled away eventually, frantically wiping at his face. “God, I've got to get back there, I can't leave him alone in there with them. I've got to get back.”

“He's okay,” I said.

“He's not. He's not okay.”

**

Brian was right. He always is.

We barely saw Justin for months, and when we did, he was a shell of who he used to be. He never talked, never made a fucking sound, and honestly I assumed the doctors had been wrong and the disease had affected his ability to speak.

Brian kept up appearances as well as he could, but anyone could see he was tired as hell. Maybe me more than anyone else, because I spent more time around the loft, since Justin didn't want to meet at the shop to work on the comic book anymore. But God, being there was fucking depressing. You could see how hard they were working just to fucking understand each other—this mixture of lipreading, sign language, just fucking writing stuff down when they got too frustrated—and it all just seemed so goddamn unfair, that they'd gotten through so much shit together, finally fucking learned how to communicate as a couple, just to have it all snatched out from underneath them.

“I don't know how you do it,” I said to Brian at once point, when Justin was in the kitchen. I still lowered my voice on instinct.

Brian rubbed his temples. “We're getting better. Once our signing improves it'll be easier.” But there was no hope in his voice, just exhaustion.

“I thought he was going to talk,” I said. “What happened?”

“He's self-conscious about it,” Brian said. “It makes him feel out of control, this sound coming out of him that everyone else can hear but he can't. And he's nervous about being too loud, or too quiet.”

“Jesus,” I said.

Brian shrugs. “Could have been worse, I guess. It's not like I've ever been much for long speeches. Fuck, I grab the kid's hand, he knows everything I'm trying to say.”

“Well yeah, you're not,” I said. “But he always liked talking to you.” I don't know why I said that, and I regretted it right away. Like Jesus, Brian really needed to feel worse about all of this?

But he just looked at me like I was nuts and said, “Well, he still talks when it's just him and me,” like it was the most obvious thing in the world.

Which I guess maybe it should have been.

**

Gradually Justin started coming out more, just for an hour or so at the diner, or to dinner at Ma's house. He didn't ever go anywhere without Brian, until one day, before I left the store to go to the loft for the comic book, he showed up there alone like it was the most natural thing in the world. I tried to play it cool, but God, it was so fucking great to see him out and alone, I probably looked like I'd just seen a puppy or some shit. Justin rolled his eyes, signed nice and slowly for me, and we got to work, stopping every once in a while for him to painstakingly fingerspell out some words or jot down notes for each other.

Eventually I went out to get food, and on my way back I noticed Brian's car parked half a block away. Sure enough, when I opened the door of the shop, I heard Brian's voice coming from the back room...and then Justin's, and I totally froze.

“He totally looks like like that horrible teacher,” Brian said, and I knew he was talking about the villain in our new issue. “Is this supposed to be him?” His voice was kind of halting, pausing while he searched for signs. I couldn't see him, but I was used to that by now. Sometimes he did it when Justin wasn't even around, just out of habit.

“I'm sure I don't know what you mean,” Justin said. I don't know what I was expecting, but fuck, he sounded just like he used to, and I was just...so fucking sad, I don't know.

“The one who wouldn't let you start the GSA,” Brian said. “The one who testified at the fucking trial.”

“Hmm, I don't know,” Justin said. “Doesn't ring a bell.”

“You are so full of shit.”

“Don't tell Michael. I let him think he comes up with the stories.”

And maybe I should have been pissed at that, but honestly I just felt so relieved that they were having this normal conversation, that they were talking about something other than hearing loss and brain scans and did Justin eat today. They sounded...happy. And for the first time I felt like maybe Justin was going to be okay.

I brought the food to the counter and made a lot of noise with the bags so Brian would know I was there, and soon enough, the two of them came out a minute later and made short work of the takeout, and then Brian said, “Come on.”

Justin raised his eyebrows.

We're going dancing Brian said to us.

**

The thumpa-thumpa doesn't know age, gender, disability, sickness, time. Ask not for who the thumpa-thumpa beats; it beats for every goddamn queer in the nation. And Justin felt it just as well as we could hear it.

He and Brian were the marvel they always were, spinning with Brian's arms around Justin's neck, swallowing each other whole, smiling and saying words only the other one could understand. Just in a new language this time.

And that night, after I hauled both their drunk asses back to the loft, Justin gave me a tired wave and headed off to bed, and Brian paused in his juggling, letting three oranges fall to the floor, and caught Justin's shirt with his hand.

And he signed, I love you.