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Chapter 2 - Face Of God.

The next morning, Justin awoke before his companion and then just lay there, his head spinning, while he tried to take in everything that had happened to him in the previous twelve hours. 

It was a hell of a lot to take in too. After that first kiss, things had gone from zero to one million at light speed. Which was probably why Justin’s head was still spinning. 

He quietly looked over at the man sleeping in the bed next to him. Even in his sleep, with raging bed-head and a trickle of drool drying on one cheek, the man was gorgeous. He was everything Justin had ever thought he’d wanted in a partner. He was smart, funny - but with a biting wit that had the potential to burn if you weren’t careful - and fucking amazing in bed. Or at least Justin thought he was amazing, not that he had much to compare the experience to. If nothing else, the man had made Justin’s first time memorable.

It was more than just the sex though, the whole night had been eye opening. So many firsts. His first real kiss. His first sexual encounter with anyone. His first hand job. His first rimming . . . His first everything. Justin still could hardly believe he’d done . . . all the things he’d just done. The spontaneity of it all - the recklessness - it was all completely out of character for him. But he wouldn’t have changed a moment of it for anything. It had been perfect.

And this man - Justin really should start calling him by the name he’d heard the man’s friends use, ‘Brian’ - was almost perfect too. If it weren’t for the fact that Justin still couldn’t read him, he WOULD be perfect. Justin reached out with one hand, lying it gently atop the slowly rising and falling chest, just to test it out one more time. Nope. There was still only a total blank where he’d expect to sense some type of emotion. Which was crazy, right? Nobody was an emotional blank. Nobody. Except, seemingly, this beautiful man he’d just spent most of the past night making love with.

Okay, so that might have been a tiny exaggeration. Brian wasn’t a TOTAL blank. Justin had sensed a few, very dim, glimmers of emotion from his lover the night before, but they were so muted and brief that, if he hadn’t been paying careful attention, he would easily have missed them. But it was enough to let Justin see that Brian wasn’t really emotionless; it was more like he was blocking his emotions. Stifling them. And doing it so thoroughly that he’d cut off everyone from getting through to his inner core. 

It was a phenomenon that Justin had never encountered before. One that left him wondering about what could have possibly induced this man to build such impenetrable emotional shields. Of course, he didn’t know Brian well enough yet to ask that very personal question, even if he had been willing to betray his own unique skills. The fact that the man was so completely cut off from him, however, didn’t make it any easier for Justin to get to know him. And, except for those few, miniscule glimpses, it didn’t seem likely that Brian was going to let anyone inside his emotional defenses.

That got Justin thinking about the few cracks he HAD glimpsed. 

The first of those cracks had come when Brian had dragged Justin along to the hospital to welcome his newborn son. That had been quite a surprise to the newbie - he would never have suspected someone like Brian would want to be involved with parenthood - but the minute he got that call from the mothers, Brian exhibited more excitement and animation than Justin had previously seen from the composed man. This elation continued when they got to the hospital and raced through the hallways to the maternity wing. Justin still wasn’t sure why he’d been included in that little adventure - he didn’t think Brian had completely bought his excuse that he couldn’t go home because his parents didn’t know he was out - but he wasn’t complaining, because it gave him more insight into the intriguing man than any of the more intimate moments they’d shared.

The moment that Brian first held his son in his hands, however, was the kicker. For those few seconds, Justin got his first inkling of what was hiding under the cool, unrufflable exterior. Justin sensed a pulse of pure, unadulterated panic, followed immediately by a softness, which then faded into a quiet pride. Pretty much what you’d expect from a new father, although Justin was surprised at the strength of emotion he felt from the otherwise closed off man. By the time Justin started to reach back, trying to finally connect with Brian, that burst of emotion was gone. The shields came back up at full strength and Brian had returned to his usual, sarcastic, disengaged self. By the time Justin realized the import of what had just happened, it was already over.

And before he could analyze this strange twist, Brian had distracted him with a new outrageousness, turning to Justin and asking what his newborn son should be named.

“What do YOU think?” Brian asked, hitting Justin with a rebellious smirk.

Every head in the room swivelled to glare at Justin, the unknown newcomer. 

Justin gulped but, since he was still being impaled by Brian’s relentless gaze, he refused to back down. “You wouldn’t survive a day at school being named ‘Abraham’, but I guess ‘Gus’ is okay.”

Justin was assailed by so many contrasting emotions after that proclamation that it felt like he was being beat up. The shorter, dark-haired man standing next to him was clearly jealous of Brian’s attention towards Justin and because of that he was totally dismissive of the response Justin had given. The bevy of lesbian friends were mostly just confused, with a little scoffing at the idea that some unknown boy should be allowed any say at all in naming the baby of their friends. The biological mother - Lindsey - was amused and elated that her preferred name had ‘won’. But the most compelling emotion Justin sensed was coming from the other mother - Melanie - who’s fury was directed not at Justin, the one making the decision, but at Brian. 

“Thank you very much . . . And who the hell are you?” the feisty little brunette shot back immediately. 

“His name is . . .” Brian stuttered to a halt, apparently unable to remember his tag-a-long’s name.

“Justin,” Michael jumped in - they’d introduced themselves to each other in the Jeep on the way over - assisting his friend while exhibiting a mix of exasperation and loyalty.

Not to be corrected, though, Brian had to immediately redirect everyone’s attention back at him. “You were on the phone when he shot his load all over me,” he explained to the entire crowd, causing Justin to cringe with embarrassment while all the assembled, and mostly grossed out, masses made noises of disgust. 

“Oh, Brian!” Lindsey exclaimed, laughingly, emitting beams of possessive affection towards the man who was still standing next to her bed, holding their son.

“He can’t help it, he’s only seventeen,” Brian replied, obviously going for the full shock value.

“So, you and Lindsey EACH had an infant tonight,” Mel commented disdainfully, her emotions a mix of contempt and jealousy. 

Justin, meanwhile, was fascinated by the complex layers of emotion this group of old friends exhibited. There was so much going on here. It would take days, if not months, to figure out how these people related to each other. The one thing that did stand out more than anything else, though, was the fact that the blankness that was Brian was at the dead center of the maelstrom of these complicated relationships. Somehow, they all revolved around him. He was the target for all their myriad and almost overpowering emotions: love, hate, jealousy, scorn, admiration, lust, enviousness . . . It was all there, just under the surface, barely concealed, and all directed unerringly at the beautiful man standing proudly in the middle of the room looking unconcerned and above it all.

“Mine doesn’t suck on my tits,” Brian retorted, refusing to let Mel have the last word, and apparently hoping to shut her up with sheer brazenness. “Unless I want him to.”

Brian had then smiled at Justin, as if including him in on the fun. Justin had smiled back, unable to resist the charisma of the man. Just as he’d been unable to resist any of the other things Brian had done to him that night. Brian was a force of nature. Nobody was able to resist him, it seemed; whether they loved him or hated him, Justin could already tell that no one was able to remain untouched by the irresistible man. But at the same time, Brian himself maintained an aloof, unemotional distance from them all, letting the swarm of everyone else’s sentiments drift around him without ever impacting him directly. Justin was engrossed by the spectacle of it all, and eager to find out even more about the enigmatic man at the center of this group. Not that figuring Brian out would be easy, since he continued to block Justin’s empathic skills. 

The only other glimmer of emotion that the man had exhibited the entire night was when they were on the way out of the hospital and happened to pass by a woman in the hallway. She was dressed in a hospital uniform and pushing a janitorial cart. Brian, who’d come back from a smoke break with Michael as high as a kite, was goofing off and almost didn’t see the woman, narrowly avoiding tripping over her cart as he spun around to make yet another sarcastic comment to his followers. 

“Brian?” the woman called out his name.

Justin was surprised to sense a flare of defiance from Brian, accompanied by a fleeting pang of fear, as the older man turned to face the woman who’d addressed him. She was mousey, short, and plump; not one to catch the eye at all. If she hadn’t spoken up, Justin wouldn’t even have noticed her. The fact that someone like Brian would be afraid of a nobody like that was curious. So was the look of scorn the brunet shot at the janitor, not to mention the flare of antipathy Justin sensed from Michael.

“Claire.” Brian’s outward affect was flat and unreactive, even while Justin sensed a moment of utter panic, which was quickly strangled and hidden behind that mask of nothingness the man maintained. 

“What are you doing here?” the janitor asked.

“None of your fucking business,” Brian replied and then, without further comment, he strode arrogantly away from the woman, forcing Michael and Justin to scramble to catch up.

That was it. Those two small glimpses of emotion were all Justin got the entire night. Even while they were making love, Brian betrayed no emotion at all. If anything, he became inversely more detached as they got more intimate. And, despite how much Justin loved what Brian had done to his body, he knew the experience had lacked something. Without any emotional connection, it was all somehow empty. How you could be physically so close and yet emotionally so distant during a moment of such indescribable passion was incomprehensible to Justin. It left Justin reeling. 

Which was why Justin was lying there, trying again to establish some type of connection to the man he’d just spent the past twelve hours of his life with. You’d think, with his hand pressed to Brian’s chest right above the man’s heart, Justin would get something. Anything. Some faint flicker of sentiment. But no. Even in sleep this man was thoroughly closed off. A blank. Poor Justin didn’t know what to think. It made no sense that a man who could play his body like a finely tuned instrument, fulfilling Justin’s every desire before he even knew what those desires were, could be so emotionally deficient. If there were emotions hidden deep within Brian’s closed off facade, Justin couldn’t discern them, and it left him feeling a bit lost. 

He was still lying there contemplating the situation when Brian’s alarm went off a few minutes later. Brian rolled over Justin’s body to reach the snooze button and then settled with a sigh, his head nuzzling into the crook of the younger man’s neck, adding a happy little kiss to the tender skin he found there. For half a second, Justin doubted himself again - maybe there was something more to his lover than that cold exterior? But then Brian woke up enough to realize he’d slipped. 

Brian immediately pulled back and grumbled. “What the fuck are you doing here?”

“You . . . said I could stay,” Justin responded, feeling crushed.

“Right . . . Your parents.” Brian rolled back, away from his bed mate, as if Justin and the night they’d just spent together meant nothing to him. “They think you’re at a friend's.”

Whereafter, Brian launched into a diatribe complaining about how his loft was a mess and that he hated the dealer who’d sold him the drugs he’d taken the night before, blaming everything on his inebriation. When Justin tried to offer some constructive advice, Brian laughed at him and replied sarcastically. Then he ordered Justin to get up and get dressed so he could take the boy home, grumbling even more when he was reminded that was impossible since he’d been too stoned to drive the night before and Michael had therefore taken the Jeep.

“I know what happened; I was there. I remember everything,” Brian declared petulantly. Then, as if to counter the prior night’s display of vulnerability, he just had to strike out and intentionally hurt the boy. “What was your name again?”

That hurt. But Justin refused to let the man who was blocking him out see any emotion from him in return. He pretended it didn’t bother him and proceeded to get ready for the day, even consenting to another go round with Brian in the shower. And there again, Brian’s gruff and disdainful words were at odds with his tender, caring touches and the way he made sure that Justin was fully satisfied. It was also contradictory to the playful way Brian helped dress him as they were getting ready, or the way Brian stood up to his friend Michael when the friend complained about Justin’s continued presence. All the mercurial moods of this man were enough to make an empath's head explode. In the end, Justin decided he’d have to ignore Brian’s words, his emotionless sarcasm, and read his body instead. 

Even so, Justin really didn’t know what to think when Brian dropped him off at school, chased off a bully for Justin, and then, in his next breath, totally blew him off. 

“When can I see you again?” Justin asked hopefully.

“You’re seeing me right now.”

“No. I mean, later. Tonight?” Justin explained.

“Who knows where I’ll be later tonight,” Brian hedged, even as he ran a finger familiarly down Justin’s chest and tugged at the boy's jacket. 

“Please . . .” Justin hated himself for begging, but he didn’t know how else to get through to this man.

“I’ll see you in your dreams,” Brian replied with an edge of mocking to his voice that offset the more sentimental meaning of the words.

And then he was gone, leaving Justin to deal with the fallout from the most wonderful and most unsettling night of his existence. Despite all the time they had spent together, the things they’d done, and the fact that his ass was still throbbing with sense memories caused by Brian’s actions, he didn’t know what to think of the man who’d just taken his virginity and changed his world forever. Who was Brian Kinney? Was he just another man? Or was he something more? Something beyond anything else Justin had ever encountered?

When his friend Daphne asked where he’d been, Justin answered her, and his own questions, with the only reply that seemed to fit. 

“I just saw the face of god!”

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Justin’s dreams; that’s where Brian had said he’d linger, and it was exactly where all things Brian remained after that one eventful night. 

Justin, understandably, couldn’t stop thinking about Brian, but all his attempts to interest the man in something more were resolutely rebuffed. He’d tried returning to Liberty Avenue and stalking Brian to what a bystander on the avenue said was Brian’s favorite bar - Woody’s - but Brian took one look at him waiting there at the table next to his gang of friends and turned on his heel. Instead, Justin got to spend the evening in the company of Brian’s self-reported ‘Best Friend’, Michael, who used the opportunity to lecture the newcomer on all the reasons why he should stay away. Justin eventually got fed up with the man’s obvious possessiveness and jealousy and went home. The next night, Justin tried cornering Brian in his loft, but his former lover refused to let Justin in, choosing some scraggy Grindr hookup instead of the willing blond boy. And even his efforts to show Brian exactly what he was missing by following the lothario back to Babylon had failed when Brian angrily turned away after Justin attempted to steal away his dance partners. 

Justin didn’t have to be able to read Brian to know he wasn’t wanted. And, despite his curiosity and desire to finally work out the mystery of Brian’s hidden emotions, he wasn’t willing to abase himself to get the answers he sought. He was too unsure of the man he couldn’t read to keep going after him. A man Justin couldn’t read at all felt like too dangerous a choice, and not worth the effort, no matter how physically attracted he was to Brian Kinney. Without that emotional connection, Justin decided it wasn’t a relationship worth pursuing. 

So, after a week or so of getting nowhere with the man, Justin gave up. He would never forget the man who’d made his first time so amazing. He’d always remember his deflowering with fondness. But someone that emotionally stunted just wasn’t a good fit for an empath. There had to be someone easier.

Justin washed his hands of the man who’d turned him out and tried to get back to his real life, seeing Brian only in his dreams night after lonely night. 

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