Dirty Magic

LaVieEnRose

Kidney failure is very weird because one day you're stuck in bed because your blood is full of toxins and it's making you hallucinate and you're trying to get your boyfriend to explain to you why there are centipedes crawling across the ceiling, and then like two days after you're feeling right as rain and you're getting dressed to go out clubbing with that boyfriend's husband.

We'd both totally expected Justin to veto, but surprisingly he was completely on board. It'll be good for you, he said, dabbing paint on his easel in the middle of the living room. Dancing's good medicine. You've been cooped up here for too long.

In our defense, we've been trying to keep the place hermetically sealed, Brian said—not a word I knew, but I could figure it out from context. Justin had been having this horrible allergy attack all day that was finally winding down now that he was totally stoned on Benadryl, but his eyes were still puffy and Brian said he was wheezing a little.

Are you okay here alone? I asked him.

I am perfectly fine, Justin said patiently. I'm going to finish this layer and then I'm going to text Emily about Jane's play date this weekend and then I'm going to clean the kitchen and then I'm going to take Martha out and then I'm going to go to bed.

Stop, it's too engrossing, Brian said.

Justin sneezed a few times and rubbed his eye. Yes, I lead a very interesting life, he said, and Brian made a face at him and kissed his nose. Justin was happy, though. He likes having his list of chores. He likes our little life. We'd offered to bring him out with us, of course, to make it a more low-key evening that he could actually enjoy, but he didn't want to and we weren't surprised. Justin was never as into the club scene as Brian was, Brian says, and the seizures and his lungs were a good excuse for him to have his quiet time at home. He needs that, I think. We're both artists, but I'm an artist in the sense that I draw well. Justin's an artist because his brain is just...different, magical, and it needs time alone in order to churn out the masterpieces he can.

Plus he probably gets annoyed with us hovering all the time and likes having the odd evening where he can cough as much as he wants and no one bothers him about it.

Brian got Justin's meds out for him and told him to do a nebulizer treatment before bed and for God's sake take a shower between taking the dog outside and getting in bed and don't forget to set the alarm and other light fussing disguised as bossiness, and Justin gave it back to us with his usual safety lecture about drugs and strangers and leaving drinks unattended--which, you'll see, turned out  to be very ironic--then told us to bring him back a present, like he always does, and then we were out the door.

It is such a goddamn relief having that dog with him, Brian said. Martha has a phone that can call Brian in an emergency. So cool.

Still, he's always putting up a front like Martha is this huge imposition. I'm going to tell Justin you said that.

You wouldn't dare.

We went to a club in Long Island City and danced until we got tired, then sat at a high top table and checked out the scene. Brian took two shots as soon as we got there but now was peacefully nursing a bourbon, and I obviously couldn't drink but was getting a contact buzz just from the lights and the bass pounding in the floor and the beautiful boys. Brian leaned back in his chair, his legs crossed at the ankles, strobe lights bouncing off his hair. He eye-fucked a tall blond walking past and then gave me a sly smile.

What? I said.

Nothing. Just good to see you back in your element.

I tilted my head back and took in the strobe lights like they were sunlight at the beach. I love dancing.

Always liked that about you.

You must have gone out all the time when you were my age.

Twenty-nine? Ha. Yeah, constantly. He sipped his drink. Year I met Justin.

I know. I laughed a little. What trips me up is the idea of you being single for twenty-nine years.

Not all of us are peacefully coupled by twenty-six.

I know, but you're just so... I searched for the sign. I don't know. Settled.

Never.

You know what I mean. You and Justin are just such a done deal. It's hard to imagine one of you without the other.

Yes, that's called codependency, Brian fingerspelled. I've made my peace with this.

Don't bullshit me, I said. You two are fucking blissful.

That didn't start at twenty-nine, Brian said. That took a long time.

I said, That's hard to imagine.

He was a headstrong teenager, I was an emotionally stunted mess. Hell, for all intents and purposes, we're still those things. We're still not exactly going on Dr. Phil as the example of an ideal couple.

Why, because he's sick?

No, of course not, he said, which obviously was the answer I was expecting, but...I don't know. I need to check sometimes. Just because...I don't know. It's hard to explain to someone who doesn't see it. I'm not used to that. I spent years with everyone telling me what a shitty job I was doing with him, bawling me out constantly for fucking it up. They used to take bets on when we'd break up.

Used to, I emphasized.

He shrugged. Half of Pittsburgh is still holding their breath waiting for me to screw it all up.

You haven't lived in Pittsburgh in ten years, I said, just as something distracted me over at the bar. A guy falling off a stool, crashing into an awkward pile on the floor. He struggled to pull himself to his feet. Damn, he's wasted.

Brian looked, then turned back to me with a strange look in his eyes.

What?

I know that guy, he said.

You do? I took a closer look, but I didn't recognize him.

He used to date Justin.

He's Deaf?

Brian shook his head.

Justin dated a hearing guy?

He was hearing at the time, Brian said, watching the guy at the bar.

But that didn't make sense with the timeline I knew, that Brian and Justin had only done casual hookups and one night stands until after Justin went Deaf and stopped wanting to fuck around with hearing guys. And of course I knew that Brian was Justin's first, so it's not like Justin could have dated him before he met Brian.

Before I could ask for clarification, though, Brian looked back at the bar. Christ, he is really fucked up.

I looked. Someone was chatting him up now, but he looked like he was having trouble staying standing.

He should fucking not be going off to the back room with someone right now, I said.

No shit. 

I could tell a bouncer or something...

They'd just throw him out on the street. Or drag him into the back room themselves. He stood up.

What are you doing? I said.

He sighed and said, Who even knows at this point, and I laughed a little. He's wasted, he's probably on something, Brian said. I am not a man devoid of responsibilities. Let's get him home.

So I followed Brian over to the bar, where he tapped the guy on the shoulder and said something I couldn't lipread from my angle, and the guy squinted at him and then just kind of...collapsed. Brian caught him underneath his arms.

“Christ,” Brian said.

“Is he conscious?”

“I think so. He's definitely roofied.” He maneuvered his hand free to fingerspell the last word.

What's his name? I said.

“Um...shit. I know this. Ethan? I think.”

"Ethan," I said, trying my best to gauge my volume against the music. "You okay?"

He blinked, but barely.

"We're going to take you home, okay?" I said.

Brian freed half of his hand to point at his lips and said, "I don't even know if he lives here. He might just be visiting."

"All right, well hopefully he wakes up enough to tell us."

"You okay to help?" Brian said. "I don't need two twinks collapsed on me."

"I'm going to pretend I couldn't lipread that. Asshole."

I got under one of probably-Ethan's arms and helped Brian haul him out of the place and into a cab. Brian got into the front seat after we'd dragged Ethan into the back, said something to the driver, then turned around in his seat to face me. Any hope of getting an address out of  him?

I poked Ethan and even slapped his cheek a few times, but he was totally out of it. "Yeah...no."

Brian cast his eyes up to the heavens. Justin is going to owe me a hundred blow jobs for this.

Obviously I knew where this was going. What other choice did we have? For surprising him in the middle of the night  with his unconscious ex-boyfriend? This is a service you're offering him?

Shut up.

So Brian told the cab driver our address and we rode back to Flushing, Ethan's legs slung over my lap. He woke up a little bit on the drive home, mumbling some things I couldn’t lipread and Brian said he couldn’t understand either. When we got to the house and helped him out of the car he tried to fight us off a little, but there was no strength behind it. Brian balanced him against his hip while he unlocked the door, and then we all kind of tumbled in and there was Justin, curled up on the couch under his blue blanket.

He stood up. “Um...”

Brian checked his watch, leaving me to wrestle Ethan inside. It’s almost two. What the fuck are you doing up?

Allergies...why do you have a...guy?

You told us to bring you back a present, Brian said. Allergies are that bad?

I... Justin said, watching while I got Ethan sprawled out on the couch. He stopped and narrowed his eyes. Is that Ethan?

Is it? Brian said. I hadn’t noticed.

Brian...

We found him like this at the club, I said. Really, extremely wasted. Brian recognized him.

Justin looked at Brian, who shrugged.

We figured we should take him home before somebody else did, I said.

No, I mean...obviously I'm glad you didn't just leave him there, Justin said, though you could have fooled me from the look on his face. I'm just, um...

He likes to know what's going to happen. He likes his to-do lists. He likes his little life, undisturbed by the sudden appearance of a guy he used to date...when, exactly?

You're wheezing, Brian said.

I'm always wheezing, Justin said vaguely, watching Ethan shift on the couch.

Brian gave him a soft, brief kiss and went into the kitchen to root around the med drawer. You two should go to bed, he said to me, and I got Justin's attention and relayed it to him.

No, no, I should stay up and keep an eye on him, Justin said.

Brian rolled his eyes. That would be something. Welcome back to consciousness, Ethan! Here's Justin having constant seizures because he didn't sleep. Why don't you two catch up?

Justin glared at him, and Brian gave him a grin that was more like baring his teeth and dropped some pills into his palm.

If you can't sleep after that much Benadryl we'll call Ripley's Believe it or Not, Brian said.

Justin sneezed and pawed at his eye, and Brian softened and pulled him in under his arm.

You two go to bed, Brian said. I'll hang out here with him.

"Brian..."

Brian nothing, he  said. You both need to sleep. It's in your handbooks. Go.

Justin looked at me, like he was asking for permission, so I took his hand and tugged at him gently, and he followed me, Martha trotting behind him. He sat on the side of the bed and undressed slowly while I slipped out of my own clothes. He had some hives on his arms, and I grazed my fingers over them and kissed him softly.

He leaned into me. This is so weird, he said.

When's the last time you saw him?

I ran into him once not long after I lost all my hearing. He doesn't sign, so it's not like we could really talk.

I can help you tomorrow, I said, and he nodded vaguely. 

I saw him a few years before that too, at some afterparty for this indie band. We were...friendly, I guess.

Bad break up?

You could say that. He sighed. I don't know. I was nineteen. Everything seemed very enormous at the time.

And I just felt...cold inside, I don't know. Because I knew I wasn't going to like what I was about to hear. I thought you were with Brian when you were nineteen.

I was, except for the...I don't know, five months or so I was with Ethan.

I didn't know you guys broke up.

Justin shrugged a shoulder, pulling on this big old t-shirt of Brian's he likes to wear to sleep. I cheated, he called me out, I left. Like I said. Everything's a big deal when you're a teenager. Or even emotionally a teenager, in Brian's case.

I thought you guys just did like...one night stands.

We did. Hence I was cheating. Justin pulled back the covers and got in bed, and I crawled in beside him, lying backwards on the bed with my head on his ankles so I could watch him sign. He reached down and played with my fingers for a moment. I don't know, he said. I was stupid, obviously. But I was dealing with like, a shitload of PTSD at the time, and so was Brian, of course, so we just weren't connecting the way I needed us to. And Ethan was...romantic, and easy, and he let me talk about the bashing, which Brian really didn't, back then.

So...what happened?

He got this record deal that required him to go back into the closet, and after what coming out did to me the first time...

Yeah.

I wasn't going to do that again. So I ended it, and probably not as kindly as I could have, and he didn't take it well, and we, you know, blocked each other's numbers and didn't run into each other for four years. He's not exactly the club type, which makes tonight especially weird. Plus I don't know why he's in New York. Maybe he had a show or something. He's pretty successful.

And then you got back together with Brian.

Not immediately. We both had some groveling to do. But eventually, yes.

Wait. Weren't you living at the loft then?

Before Ethan? Yes.

So...

Justin smiled a little. I moved in with Ethan, yes.

God. You guys must have been really serious. My stomach felt heavy.

He rolled his eyes. We had rings.

And that just...God. Because Justin and I don't even have rings. And I'm not pointing that out because I was jealous, because that wasn't the issue.

It was that all this time, I thought Justin and Brian had been...I don't know, not perfect, I'm not stupid, but kind of...perfect in how imperfect they were, if that makes sense? Like, the way they stood by each other through all this trauma and through all of each other's neuroses, how they argued and cried and fucking switched languages and always were just there for each other, for fifteen years now. It wasn't that they were this model of an ideal relationship, it's that they were something else entirely from every other relationship I'd seen. Something that could bend and stretch and twist as much as it would ever need to and never break. Something binding these two together from before they'd even met. I know I sound dramatic and ridiculous and I knew at the time that I was being dramatic and ridiculous but...if you haven't met Brian and Justin, you can't understand. But everyone who knows them gets it. It's like each of them is holding a part of the other one, like there's no way to separate them cleanly anymore, or maybe ever.

Let Brian call it codependence if he wants. But it's the kind of thing that makes you believe in fate, destinies. Magic. 

Except it turns out you could separate them. That something as banal as someone having an affair was enough to crush the blood and bone holding the two of them together.

So...what did that say about my place, if my archetype wasn't as stable as I thought? Where did that put me?

Evan, Justin said gently.

Sorry. Just in my head.

Do you want to get rings?

No, no. It's not that. I crawled up the bed and lay down next to him. Do you think Brian's sad out there, thinking about back then?

No, Justin said. Brian found a lost lamb to rescue. That's all he's thinking about.

Yeah.

Justin kissed my eyelids. Go to sleep, he said, and I pulled him and kissed him for a long time. Holding on.

Justin fell asleep pretty quickly, but I couldn't, not until I did something. I crept out of bed and into the living room. Brian was in the kitchen making some coffee, Ethan still passed out on the couch. He raised an eyebrow when he saw me. Didn't I send you to bed?

"Yeah."

Well?

"I love you," I said.

Ew, gross, Brian said. He tackled me into a hug.

**

Justin and I woke up at the same time the next morning. Our own kind of dirty magic, I guess. I should go check on them, Justin said, but I held him by his wrist until he stopped trying to get up and we fooled around under the covers for a while. He's incredible always, but especially in the mornings, his hair white-blond in the sunlight and his eyes sleepy and sparkly. 

We got up eventually, showered, took the dog outside, and then ventured into the living room. Brian was in the armchair, watching TV and looking generally like someone who'd stayed up all night. Ethan was fast asleep under a blanket.

Justin frowned. He's still out?

Brian shook his head, stretching. He's woken up a few times. Can't tell if he recognizes me. He's still pretty groggy. He yawned and said, Allergies better today?

Yeah, Justin said, even though he'd been sneezing since we woke up. Evan's a little wobbly.

Just kind of dizzy, I said. I checked the time. I had dialysis in about an hour. I should eat something.

I'll make some more coffee, Justin said, and Brian nodded strongly.

I followed Justin into the kitchen and had a bowl of cereal while he was making coffee, and he was just filling up mugs by the time I finished. I took mine, and one for Brian--two's a lot for Justin to juggle, with his hand--and followed him out to the living room, where Ethan was waking up. 

He sat up and blinked in the sunlight, running a hand through his hair. He narrowed his eyes. "Justin?"

Justin signed Justin, back at him and handed him the mug of coffee he'd meant for himself.

"Right," Ethan said. "Sorry. Um..." Sorry.

Justin raised his eyebrows.

"Uh, learned a little in elementary school," Ethan said. School. It was kind of more like paper, but thought that counts, I guess. And Justin nodded and sat down on the arm of Brian's chair.

"How are you feeling?" Justin said.

"Uh...been better," Ethan said, but he signed, Fine, so I got Justin's attention and interpreted instead. "What the fuck happened?"

"Found you at a club in Long Island City," Brian sim-commed. "Think someone put something in your drink."

"God. Fuck."

Brian shrugged a little. "Happens to the best of us," he said, and I wondered, somehow for the first time in this whole ordeal, if it had ever happened to him, how he managed to recognize it so quickly. 

Ethan was watching Justin kind of curiously, and I didn't get why until Brian caught my eye and said, "His breathing." Of course. Daphne said once that it's pretty scary for people who aren't used to it. "He's all right," Brian said to Ethan, not sim-comming this time. "He's doing all right."

Justin watched his lips and then looked at Ethan, but he adjusted himself in the chair so he was leaning against Brian. Brian reached his hand around him and scratched lightly on his back, behind his ribs. 

It turned out Ethan was just visiting the city for a few days, and he actually had to get on a train for a few hours. Justin insisted that he get something to eat first, so he went to the kitchen and started making something while Brian turned to me. 

Don't you need to be getting ready?

Yeah, in a minute, I said. And don't say you're coming with me. You look like shit, they'll probably put you on dialysis instead by accident.

He rolled his eyes. Justin's going to want to play nurse to Ethan.

I know. I'm fine by myself.

Did Justin take his meds yet?

I don't think so.

He got up and went to the kitchen, and I stayed where I was and watched instead of going to get dressed right away. Brian shook out Justin's meds and then tapped him on the shoulder, and Justin opened his mouth and let Brian tip the pills down his throat. Brian poured a cup of coffee and smiled at him.

What? Justin said.

Just reveling in how awkward this is for you.

Justin covered his face. Stop.

Brian handed him the coffee cup. Do you want me to call Gabe? Calvin? Should we get Daphne over here? Oh, and Emily, you've slept with her too.

I'm going to kill you.

Maybe you should revisit some other decisions you made at that age, Brian said. I do miss the hair.

Don't hold your breath.

You're one to talk, wheezy.

This is just so fucking bizarre, Justin said. Evan was asking me all about it last night and I was just...

A lifetime ago.

It really was. It doesn't even feel possible that he should be here. Like he's crossing dimensions or something. He kissed Brian. Thank you. For rescuing him.

I couldn't live with myself if I didn't take every opportunity I could to rub your past mistakes in your face.

Yes, I do love that about you.

Next time someone's going off about what a genius you are, I'll remember to go, well, there was this time...

You're the only one who ever goes off about what a genius I am, Justin said.

Brian had no comeback to this, so he just bit his lip and gave Justin sultry looks until Justin rolled his eyes and got on his tiptoes and kissed him for a while. 

And I felt warm again. Because God, who else but the two of them could weather something like this with absolutely no tension, no rehashing of old drama? They were okay. 

And maybe it wasn't always like that. Maybe they hadn't always been perfect, like I'd thought. Like I'd wanted. Maybe the magic isn't what kept them together for fifteen years. Maybe the magic is the fact that they've been together for fifteen years. 

Fifteen fucking years, with illness and injury and disaster and change and children and lovers. You don't go through all of that to get snippy about an ex-boyfriend on the couch, and not everybody gets that. But they do. 

They're just on the same team. That's the thing.

Maybe me too.

I looked at Ethan, who was looking at Brian and Justin. "They seem happy," he said.

"Yeah," I said. "They're perfect."