Come Here

LaVieEnRose

London without Justin had been...fine.

I ate at nice restaurants with important people. I smiled and shopped and bought drinks and fucked men with pretty accents. I signed contracts and shook hands.

It was all fine.

I just couldn't sleep.

**

The truth is, being away didn't feel as different as I thought it would, not the first time I left. There was no real sense of being away from Justin on any sort of important level. It felt very temporary; it felt like just physical distance. I was a plane ride away, and sure, it was a long plane ride, but we were still existing in the same metaphysical space, and as anyone who's existed in the same metaphysical space as Justin can tell you...you don't not notice that.

So I would have liked to have had him here, sure, but there wasn't any sort of desperation about it, and it's important that you understand that. I was doing okay without him, but that's not because I was strong, or resilient, or learning anything.

It's because he was never really gone. The space between us could be closed by one ocean, eight hours, one text message, one FaceTime phone sex session.

He was never really gone, when I was in London.

And that scared the everlasting shit out of me.

I'll explain.

**

But first, he got sick, like he is wont to do. He'd mentioned to me that he wasn't feeling well and he was on antibiotics, but I hadn't pushed for more information, even though I wanted it. All of the talking we were doing at that point felt...precipitous, like we were one wrong move or one missed text away from falling out of each other's lives completely, so we were being careful with each other in this way that was so goddamn not us, so when Evan called and he was in the hospital, yeah, a part of me thought, okay, at least I fucking know what this is.

After a four day stint in the hospital for fuckin' strep throat, my little drama queen was finally home. He had to keep taking oral doses of an antibiotic he was mind-numbingly allergic to, but so far it was Justin: 4, anaphylactic shock: 0, so there was hope we could keep that one up, at least. He was back on meds to raise his white count, since that had tanked again, removing all hope that that was a one-time issue, but it wasn't bad enough that he needed to be on full quarantine. His fever was down below a hundred and two. He'd lost twelve pounds since I'd left for London, but he was eating again now. He was breathing thanks to high doses of steroids, and not having seizures, thanks to jacking his anti-convulsant into oblivion. .

There was no reason I needed to stay, in other words.

Okay, croaky, I said, while I peeled back the covers on the bed. Home sweet home. Get in.

“When's your flight?” he asked me.

Please stop talking. I cannot explain to you how awful his voice sounded. You have never heard anyone so hoarse in your life. It was like there were fucking holes in his throat and the air was escaping before he could force out a sound, and then the sound that did come out was like a duet between a cricket and a wood saw. Not until tomorrow morning. I wasn't sure what time they'd let you go today.

He stretched, slipping under the covers. We can have sex.

That was certainly the hope, but I'm not convinced yet. I could fucking kill you for dragging me all the way back here and then being too sick to fuck me.

Like you would have come home if I wasn't, he said, and, uh, ouch, that stung, especially since it didn't even seem like he was saying to be vindictive. He was too tired for that shit, already burrowing into his pillow and making raspy versions of his usual sleepy noises, which was no help at all at making the gnawing feeling in my chest go away.

We'll see how you're feeling tonight, I said. You need anything now?

He shrugged. Tea maybe.

Okay. Go to sleep until I bring it, I said, and he nodded and nuzzled his pillow.

Evan was slumped over the kitchen table half asleep. I flicked his arm when I came out and he blinked up at me.

Go to sleep, I said.

He put his head down on the table. “Okay.”

Not here.

He dragged himself mostly upright, his chin in his hand. “How come you have to go back to London, anyway?”

Like I hadn't already been over this five times with Justin. It would make no sense not go back now, I said, filling up the kettle with my other hand. I'm almost done over there. If I give up now it was all for nothing.

“Make no sense except you'd get to stay here with us.”

I'll be home before you know it.

“That's what you said the first time,” he said. “And trust me, we...knowed it. Knew it.”

Evan.

He whined and rubbed his eyes. “I want to stay up in case his fever goes back up.”

I've got him, I'm here until the morning. Go get some sleep. You're lucky you haven't caught this shit as it is, you know. Strep's contagious.

“You don't scare me.”

I hauled him up and nudged him towards the stairs. Bed, I said, and he made a grumpy noise and kissed my cheek on his way down.

Justin was asleep when I got back and, from the looks of it, in the very early stages of a nightmare. Normally I'd wait it out a little, see if he could get himself out of it, but I figured the lad had had enough stress this week. I put my hand on the small of his back and shook him gently, then gave him a bit of space to pull himself together on his own. He'd rather do it himself, when he can.

“Hey,” he said after a minute.

Hey. Tea, here.

“Thank you,” he croaked, taking the mug. He'd been doing that since I got back: thanking me for shit, like it was something he needed to do, and it...I didn't like it.

I got undressed slowly and crawled into bed next to him while he drank. He was still having a hard time swallowing, sad to say, but he was giving it the good ol' college try, and I propped myself up my elbow and played with his hair a little while I watched him.

You look sick still, I said.

He nodded, setting the mug on the nightstand. “It's the hives.”

Why the fuck did you take so long to go to the hospital?

It's hard to tell when things are...things. I thought I'd be fine.

You have to be careful, Justin.

He chewed on his cheek.

Come here, I said, and he gave me a skeptical look to let me know he was still pissed at me—it's not like we'd had much of a chance to talk, since he hadn't been awake more than twenty minutes in a stretch since I'd gotten here—but he scooted closer, and I moved carefully on top of him, keeping my weight off of his body. He felt so small and fragile underneath me, and God, these hives. I needed to check them.

I took his clothes of carefully and skimmed my hands over him. “Scratch,” he said, but I didn't. I checked him with my fingers and my lips, feeling the blood warm so close to the surface, the way the worst patches throbbed on his neck and the insides of his wrists. I soothed them with my tongue and whispers of cool air. He shivered underneath me and and made a grab for my waist.

I pinned his hands back down. “No. Still.”

He glared at me. He hates that.

You're sick, I said. Stay still.

I touched his swollen nymph nodes and checked his temperature with my forehead against his, and when I kissed him he pushed off against the bed, pressing himself into me.

I placed him back where he was. No.

“God—”

I shook my head and kissed him deeply before he could hurt his throat bitching any more, and I worked my hands down his body, scratching lightly at his skin, feeling him wheeze when he breathed in sharply. Poor asthma, I said, small.

“Fuck me,” he hissed, grabbing at me again.

I pinned his wrists up above his head. Gently, I said, half just to fucking rile him up at this point.

”Fine,” he said, and he groaned when my nails dug into his itchy skin.

He had a rough night later, nauseous from the meds and a small seizure and teary and mad about me leaving the next day, and we were up a lot when he was throwing up or coughing or scared.

It was the best sleep I'd had in weeks.

**

I don't think it's important to go into how he shook the next day when I was leaving, shivered like without me touching him he was freezing.

I don't think I need to tell you the rationales I gave to them over and over, how it wasn't much longer now, how I needed to see this through, how it would all be worth it in the end.

I do think you need to know that I acted busy and annoyed and important all the way out the door, and that when I was in the terminal and they called my flight to board I went into the bathroom and sobbed like a fucking child because of how overwhelmingly, unbearably, impossibly I did not want to get on that plane.

We've gone over how the plane was just distance and being away from him didn't really matter, right? Okay, well fuck that, because now his immune system was bad again and the reaction could get worse at any time and, oh right, he'd almost died from a goddamn childhood illness.

Do you have any idea what it feels like to not have a hand on him?

And I know you probably think I should be used to this by now because it keeps happening, but that, in the words of one Justin Taylor, is exactly my point.

God, God. I could have been looking at him right then and instead I was looking at the door of a goddamn bathroom stall.

It hurts less to be the one to go, but goddamn, it is not enough. I was going 3500 miles away and if I had learned one fucking thing watching him cry in hospital beds all these years it was this: this is no goddamn world to travel alone.

And this boy is no goddamn place to keep your heart.

It felt like I was leaving a fucking part of me behind and I do not mean that in a sweet way. I mean that it felt like my body was physically coming apart in that fucking airport bathroom. I loosened my tie. I did the stupid breathing exercises I make Justin do. I tried to forget that the thought of being even an inch further away from where I already was goddamn unbearable.

Which is exactly why I had to do it, but first I was going to cry like I hadn't in years.

**

So that second time I was in London, after I get back? Now it felt like he was gone.

And I recognized even at the time that this was faulty as shit, because we were talking all the time, much more than we had the first time out. He was still pissed at me, but coming home once had made all of it seem more...manageable and temporary, I guess. I would be done here in a month, hopefully less. There was nothing unsurvivable about that.

Except that I was goddamn miserable and I couldn't really figure out why. My appetite was gone, and I started getting these tension headaches every evening. All the colors everywhere seemed...dull, washed out. London as a city had lost all of its appeal, and I spent all the time I wasn't in meetings or schmoozing clients in my hotel room watching TV. Whenever Emily was here we'd call Gwen to FaceTime with Jane, and fuck, she was getting so big. I called Gus a lot and bought him a lot of shit he didn't need.

And I called Justin a lot. And bought him a lot of shit, but that's nothing new.

He got better, slowly. He was a fucking trooper about those antibiotics, taking them dutifully even though they made him feel worse than the strep did and somehow not clawing off all of his skin. He was back to work and helping Evan and he seemed to be having a much easier time of it than he did before. Things weren't, you know, a hundred percent, but he smiled at me. He told me he loved me.

His world seemed to still have color in it, so that was annoying.

I don't want to make it sound like he wasn't having a hard time with this, because...it's Justin we're talking about; him being more heartless than I am is not on the table. He'd cry a little sometimes when we talked at night, and whenever he fell asleep on the phone he was always very carefully squished onto his side of the bed, which is ironic since when I'm actually there he sprawls all over me like a damn starfish, but whatever.

He was getting by, though.

So what the fuck was wrong with me?

**

One Friday evening I was in the office I was renting talking to Alisha, who was going to head up the office here. She was young, just turned thirty-five, incredibly successful, confident and pulled-together and gorgeous to boot. Kinney with an accent.

Emily was there, with her interpreter, and Alisha had two assistants with her, and we were going over..I don't know. Some contract thing. Everything was just about set in stone at this point. This time next month, we'd be pulling in pounds hand over fist, or whatever the fuck.

I checked my watch—almost nine. “Christ,” I said. “You should go home.”

She shrugged. “Nine? This is nothing.”

“Your husband's going to forget what you look like.”

She snorted. “Like that depends on whether I'm there or not. Don't think we've looked at each other in years.”

“Well,” I said, because what the fuck else could I?

“It's business,” she said simply. “He and I have the same priorities.” She smiled and tapped the contract in front of her. “Works out great for everyone.”

So that was rolling around in my head, I suppose, when I got back to the hotel after the additional hour of work Alisha had dragged us through. I smoked a cigarette—fuck was I gonna have to shake that again quick in two weeks before I got back to Justin and his lungs—and took a shower and when none of that did anything to quiet down the buzzing in my brain, I called America.

It was a little after six in New York, and Justin and Evan answered together, sprawled out on the living room floor on the cushions, some kind of early '00s rock shit Evan loves playing softly in the background. They were both half-naked and sweaty and giggly, so, y'know, no mystery there, and their legs were tangled up in the kind of strange angles only a flexible 28-year-old and loose-jointed epileptic can pull off. Justin had a mug of something, and he smiled at me over the rim.

I breathed in. Hey.

“Hi Brian,” they said together, and my stomach flipped. Justin's R.

You doing okay? I asked both of them. Justin.

They nodded. I had dialysis today, Evan said, like that was any different from every Friday, but I didn't mind.

How do you feel?I asked him.

Squeaky clean, he said, wriggling around on Justin. Like a rubber duck.

I bit back a smile and looked at Justin. How's the breathing?

He took a slow breath or me to listen in. It's good. Slept a lot today.

You did?

“Uh-huh.”

My boy. Good. That's really good.

He smiled and sipped from his mug.

Tea? I said.

Hot chocolate. Evan made it.

With cream, he said. For him. Not for me.

He's trying to fatten me back up, Justin said, and Evan nodded and leaned his head against Justin's arm.

Imagine forgetting these faces.

God.

They were okay. They were fine. They were happy and cuddly and healthy, relatively, and they didn't need me to rush home and save anything.

But the second I got the phone I texted Emily and told her she could finish out the rest of this herself, and I bought a ticket home before I could stop myself. Before I could talk myself out of it and remind myself why I was doing this an what it meant that I didn't want to do it anymore, before I could think about the money or the reputation or the fucking boiling risk of it all, all I thought about was the life, the life, the life.

Because, God, Jesus mother of fucking God.

I just wanted to be there.

**

It was Saturday morning in New York when I got back. I unlocked the door and there they were, sitting at the kitchen table eating breakfast. I dropped my suitcase on the floor and went straight to the sink to wash my hands.

“Um—” Justin said.

“Brian?”

I kissed Evan's cheek. Hi, darling.

“Hi...”

Justin's lips were slightly parted. His hair was messed up and beautiful. He had a speck of grape jam on the side of his hand. He was wearing one of my old tank tops and there was a bandaid on his shoulder from his allergy shots.

You are a fucking masterpiece, I said, accidentally.

“Brian, what are you—”

Sorry, I said to Evan, and I took Justin by the wrists and, as gently as I could, dragged him to our bedroom and picked him up and kissed the shit out of him with his back against the wall.

“How long are you—” he said, when I let him breathe, and I shook my head and kissed him hard.

Clothes off, I said. I'm home. I'm home now.

**

It was mid-afternoon by the time we got out of bed, and only then because we were both fucking starving. Evan was nowhere to be found; he was probably downstairs sleeping. He's always tired the day after dialysis.

“You really think Emily can handle everything alone?” he asked, while he made us sandwiches. I was sitting at the kitchen table, wearing our top sheet because I didn't feel like getting dressed and it smelled like him and I was letting myself have this.

Yeah. Its just signing shit at this point. She's been forging my signature for years.

“So I still don't..really get it,” he said, bringing plates to the table. “Last time you were on FaceTime with us and everything was great, you decided to go to London. So this time you decide to come home? There's just something about us being stable that makes you switch continents?”

I put my fingers around his wrist. I thought you were working on gaining weight.

“Brian.”

I sighed and slumped back in my chair. Can I please eat before the interrogation?

He nudged my plate towards me, and we were quiet for a little while we ate. He sipped from his water glass, his hand shaking just a little the way it always does. He wasn't nervous.

He gave me an admirable three minutes of peace before he said, “You did leave because of me, didn't you?”

I'm very bad at lying to Justin, and I'd done so goddamn much of it the past few months. My quota was reached.

Still, you don't go far in this business without learning how to soften a blow or two. I came back because of you too, though.

“Brian, I'm not trying to...” He sighed and reached across the table to play with my fingers for a little. “I told you I want you to take breaks when you need them, and I meant it.”

I don't want breaks.

“I'm not mad at you. I just want to know...if this is something you're going to have to do every ten years, if this is all going to build up and become too much and you have to get away rom me for a few months and...you know. Breathe. Figuratively speaking. Literally speaking.”

Sorry, literally? I have to double-check his words every once in a while, the hard ones.

“Yeah. I know that this is a lot. That we're a lot. I'm a lot. People get worn out with this shit. It's natural.”

Yeah, see, here's the thing: he doesn't get breaks from it, and he's the one who actually has that shit inside of him. So the fact that he was sitting here telling me calmly that it was okay if I needed a break—and let me absolutely goddamn fucking clear that I did not, and that was not what was happening here—was just about as infuriating as something was possible to be.

Do you understand how much time Justin has to spend bending over backwards to make sure people aren't too uncomfortable with the fact that he isn't healthy?

Do not put me on that list.

I do a lot of shit wrong but do not put this one on me.

“I can try to be less overwhelming,” he said.

You know I don't want that, I said. None of this sounds like us.

“That's what I thought too,” I said. “I don't know anymore.”

I pinched the bridge of my nose. “God.”

Justin was quiet for a minute, scratching the surface of the coffee table. “Did it help?” he said, after a while. “Having some distance from this?”

I laughed. I had to. Did it help?

He nodded.

Christ, it didn't... I shook my head. Do you have any idea how much worse it is not being here? Hearing you cough through a the damn phone lines, trying to fucking guess how your fever is instead of feeling it, seeing that damn look in your eyes that you're going to have a seizure and there's not a damn thing I can do about it? Feeling...God. I still feel it.

He called me my fourth day in London and asked me if I would fucking please stop eating shit he was allergic to because his throat hadn't stopped itching since I left. This shit is not a metaphor, and he knows.

I can't get away from you, I said. You're in my fucking bones. There's no plane ride. There's nothing.

“But you want to,” Justin said softly. “You want to get away from me. Or wanted to. That's what you're saying.”

I wanted to know what it would feel like.

Okay, but why?

I got up and leaned against the counter, facing him. Christ, Justin. Why do you think?

He breathed out, so slowly.

“Oh,” he said softly.

I looked away from him.

“I'm not going to die,” he said.

Yeah, so you keep telling me.

“Brian.”

I ran my hand over my mouth. I was sitting there watching the two of you on FaceTime and Christ, you weren't even doing anything, you were just being there, and you two are both... I swallowed and closed my eyes.

Because...look, okay? Can you try for a second to imagine what this is like?

I am not trying to get too woe-is-me about this. I'm not. Trust me, when all the bullshit is said and done, I am very understanding of the fact that the guy who comes home and sees and talks to and fucks and sleeps next to Justin Taylor every night has very little room to complain about anything other than snoring. Trust me. I understand. There are all of two bastards on this earth who get that and I can complain about a hell of a lot but I don't now how someone would complain about this.

And now I'm about to, because can you imagine what it goddamn feels like when your motivation to get up every morning, your fucking will to get through the day, your breath and your blood and your fucking personality, every single thing about you that makes you you, is kept inside one very small, very breakable person?

Very breakable.

And then Christ, if that weren't enough, let's throw another one into the mix. Let's just spread this shit around in as many fragile places as possible. Who the fuck comes up with this stuff?

I just needed to know if I could do it, I said.

He bit his lip. “We haven't really talked about this, have we?”

I took a moment and then sat back down at the table. No.

I don't think I used to need to. The possibility of Justin dying from all of this...it had been there, in the background, for a long time, but not the way it had been since this fall. And maybe this had all been building since then, I don't know. God knows I'd been fucking terrified ever since.

“Okay,” he said, sort of business-like, and I smiled a little in spite of everything. “Evan is not going to die, first of all. People are fine on dialysis for years and then they get transplants and they're fine. The mortality rate is like seven percent a year and that's factoring in a bunch of old people. He's not going to die.” He paused. “He sort of thinks he's dying.”

I know he thinks he's dying.

“He sees death everywhere. He's like me and seeing ways you could get a concussion.”

I let myself laugh.

“So he's not going anywhere,” Justin said.

We were quiet, probably because we both knew what was coming next.

Do you think you're going to die? I asked him. Honestly.

He shook his head. Not anytime soon, no. I don't...feel tired like that.

Things can hit you so fucking fast, though.

This fall I knew I was dying, he said.

I remember. You can't really forget.

So I think...I think even if it's fast, you get a feeling. I think I'd know.

“God.” I ran my hands down my face. God. I don't know how to make that enough. Do you worry about it?

I worry about everything, you know me. But I worry more that...I'm going to feel like this forever.

You worry you won't die.

He smiled ruefully. Well, I wasn't going to say it.

I snorted, and he played with my sleeve, and a minute later I stood up and helped him to his feet and just hugged him for a while, feeling his heartbeat slow and steady and even against my stomach. I buried my nose in his hair and just rested, while he ran his hand up and down my back.

Tell me how to be brave, I said, small.

He pulled back a little. “Ever since he got sick I do this thing. I wake up every morning and I say to myself: we're making it out of today alive. And then the next day we do it again.”

Can you say it to me too?

“Okay.”

Now, please.

He looked up at me. “We are making it out of today alive.” And then he started coughing, my boy, and he blushed a little and apologized when he was done. “Bad timing.”

I shook my head.

“I am sorry,” he said. “I know you hate when I say it, but...I'm sorry that I scare you. I'm sorry I'm like this.”

It's hard to stay calm when he does that, but I make myself.

Here's the thing, I said eventually. I hate that you feel awful and I hate that there's this risk and I know that you don't want to do this forever and I get that, but I really need you to stay exactly like this for a very long time, okay?

Christ, you really do like your life.

Yeah, I told you. It's embarrassing.

**

We had some more sex after that, because we sort of had to, and then I went to take a shower, finally, but Justin said he was too tired and when I came out he was asleep. I figured he deserved a break. I could hear Evan moving around in the basement, so I flicked the lights on at the top of the stairs and went and sat on the bottom after he called me down. He was doing dishes in his little kichenette, and he had earbuds in, which he took out and replaced with his hearing aids, and he looked peaceful.

“Hi,” he said.

Hey. Sorry I kind of blew you off earlier.

“Yes, I was startled by the lack of a tearful reunion.”

I rolled my eyes, and he smiled.

“So are you really back?” he said.

Yeah. Flaked out at the last minute. A Kinney speciality tradition.

“The deal will still go through, right?”

Yeah, of course. I'm not that stupid.

He made a face like he wasn't sure, and I wrinkled my nose at him.

How'd you know? I said. About being here for good.

“Justin caught me up while you were in the shower.”

Oh, fantastic. What else did he tell you? I said. It's not like he didn't deserve the explanation for why I left—I did disappear on him as well—but...God, you can't tell Justin anything.

But Evan just shrugged all smugly and went back to his dishes. And for a blessed minute I thought we were avoiding the heart-to-heart—I really do have a limit with these things, despite what my recent behavior would suggest—but then he said, “You know...”

I groaned and banged my head against his bannister.

“You know,” he said. “I decided I was done after Adam died.”

And then I shut up, because I'm pretty sure I'd heard Evan say Adam's name all of once, ever. He doesn't talk about this.

“I just didn't want to go through that again, and I felt like...like nothing else would ever measure up to how much I loved him, so what was the point?”

If this is a story about how Justin dying will actually be the prequel to my real great love, you can spare me, I said. I'm not being sweet and romantic when I say there isn't someone else out there for me. That's not a nice thing.

“Adam was not a prequel,” he said, calmly, but his voice was firm.

I nodded and ducked my head. Sorry.

“My point,” he said. “Is that sometimes you meet a person who's so big and bright that you forget the rules you've made. I'm going to guess you have some idea of what I'm talking about.”

He turned around to put some dishes away while I, I don't know, got a fucking hold of myself. When he turned back around I said, What does it feel like?

He shook his head. You don't need to know.

I might..

“No, you don't, Brian. There's no preparing for this. There's nothing I can say to ease you into this, and no two-month vacation that will give you a trial run for it.”

I sighed.

“It's horrible,” he said. “It's unimaginably, indescribably horrible, and you don't need to think about it because it won't prepare you. There is no preparing for it.”

How the fuck are we supposed to love him? I said.

Evan smiled a little and shrugged one shoulder. How could you not?

I slumped back against the wall. “Goddddd.”

Evan laughed, coming over and looking at me through the rails in the bannister. “I'm not sure I got that exactly, but I get the idea.”

I pouted at him, and he laughed a little more.

“The bottom line is that people are what matter,” he said. “You think that it's principles or preparation or rules or fucking...fear, even, but then every single fucking time it turns out, no, it's just the people.”

Christ, how much more needs to happen to you before you get hard and jaded?

“I don't know. Guess we'll see.” He held onto the bannister and rocked back and forth some while I stood up. “And it does...it helps that I wouldn't be alone this time,” he said.

I kicked him gently through the bannister rails and didn't look at him. That thing I said. About there only being him. I took a deep breath. You know I...

He held up a hand. You don't have to do it.

Thank God.

**

I headed to the office for a few hours to see what kind of disarray they'd left me here in the colonies, then called home to see what the pests wanted me to bring home for dinner. Evan said Justin was still sleeping, so I figured we'd just order in something later.

He was awake when I got home, but only barely, his eyes still a little red and sleepy. He was sitting at the foot of the bed rubbing lotion on his legs, and he smiled at me when he saw me in the doorway.

“Doing okay?” he asked me.

I nodded and came in and flopped down next to him on the bed, my face in the comforter. I'm going to be a mess if you die, I said.

He laughed. “Okay, it's on the record. Do you feel better now?”

No. I turned my head towards him. But I don't think I need to.

He watched me, his eyes warm.

I'm just really happy with you, I said.

Let it happen, babe.

I rolled my eyes and turned my face back to the bed. Don't call me babe.

I felt him move next to, and a minute later he was rolling me over, straddling my waist with his greasy legs. I fought him but only barely, playing with the soft hair on his thighs.

Good things can happen to you too, Raincloud, he said. Let them.

I groaned and covered my face with my hands. God. Don't fucking go anywhere.

“We are making it out of today alive,” he said.

I took a deep breath. We are making it out of today alive.

We.