Chapter 1 - Double Trouble.

Justin waited while Brian got out of the Jeep and sauntered around the front of the vehicle, coming up to the passenger side and pulling open the door. The boy was a little reluctant to get out of the car. His boyfriend had talked him into wearing the tight black leather pants and almost see-through, too-small blue shirt that he still had left over from their trip to Portland, but Justin still wasn’t sure about this outfit. He almost felt like he wasn’t wearing a top at all; you could see his chest berries through the shirt! And to make matters worse, Brian had insisted Justin HAD to wear the fancy new boots that he’d given him as a present, despite Justin’s ongoing complaints that even nice, expensive shoes that had their own special name - Prada - hurt his feet. 

“You’re not going to hide in the car all night, are you, Sunshine?” Brian asked teasingly.

“Maybe.”

That caused Brian to laugh. Justin really loved Brian’s laugh. He didn’t think Brian laughed often enough, but when he did - and it was a real, truly happy, laugh - it made his eyes crinkle up with happiness and the sound caused little ripples of happy to squiggle in Justin’s belly too. 

“Come on, you twat. I want to dance,” Brian ordered when it looked like Justin still wasn’t going to leave the safety of the Jeep. 

Justin climbed down out of the vehicle and tried for the hundredth time to pull the too-small shirt further down so his tummy wasn’t peeking out. He wanted to cover himself up with his hands but he knew that Brian would laugh at him again, so he resisted that urge. 

“You look fabulous, Sunshine. Stop fidgeting and let’s go. I’m sure the guys are already inside waiting for us,” Brian directed, pulling Justin along behind him towards the entrance of the dancing place.

Justin knew he shouldn’t be so worried about going out dancing with his boyfriend. He’d had a wonderful time the last time they went out. But this was the first time he’d be going out to Babylon - the dancing place that Brian always went to with his friends - since they got back from their trip and it was also the first time they’d be spending any real time with ‘the guys’, so he was a little nervous. He knew that Brian was looking forward to a little down time after all the work they’d been doing since they got back to Pittsburgh; they’d been so busy that Brian hadn’t had been able to spend hardly any time at all with his friends. But that only meant that the unsure little tyro was even more anxious than ever. He so wanted to make a good impression on ‘the guys’. But that pressure, combined with the uncomfortable and revealing clothing he was wearing, and the fact that this dancing place was loud and packed to the rafters with so many people, made it all a little daunting.

Brian obviously sensed his companion’s hesitation and grabbed Justin’s hand, giving it a reassuring squeeze. “You’ll be fine, Sunshine. You’re young, blond, hot, and you’re fresh meat. Hell, these fags are going to eat you up.”

Justin came to an abrupt halt, stumbling over his shoes in the process. No way was he going to go into that place if the people inside were going to try and eat him. That didn’t sound fun at all. 

“What now?” Brian asked, his voice betraying the fact that he was getting a little fed up with all the delays.

“You won’t really let anyone try to eat me, will you, Brian?” Justin asked with a worried frown instead of his usual bright smile. “I don’t want any strange people to bite me. I mean, sometimes when you bite me, like when we’re doing boyfriend things, it’s okay. You don’t usually bite hard or anything, but I don’t think it would be nearly as nice if other people bit me.”

Brian snorted and shook his head. “No, Justin. Nobody’s going to really bite you. It was just an expression - I meant it as a compliment, because you look so good. Good enough to eat.” And Brian emphasized his point by leaning down and taking an experimental nibble at the side of Justin’s neck. 

“See, I like those kinds of bites, Just Brian. But only from you, okay. I don't want anyone else eating me. Okay?”

“Okay, you twat. I promise to defend you from any and all vampires that might be at the club tonight who may want to take a bite out of you,” Brian answered with another little huff of laughter. 

“Vampires?” Justin was alarmed. “That’s not a real thing . . . is it, Brian? You told me that wasn’t a real thing when we watched that scary movie the other night. There aren’t any REAL vampires here, are there? The movie was really scary . . .”

“Stop,” Brian ordered. He’d been trying to slowly drag his ‘date’ from the car towards the entrance to the club, but now he stopped and turned to face Justin directly. “There are no vampires. Nobody is going to try and eat you. And you have to quit taking everything I say so literally, Sunshine.” Justin looked down at his toes bashfully. “Come on, kid. Work with me here, okay? All I want to do is take you out, show you off a little, have a few drinks, and dance. You can do all that, right? You’ve even been here at Babylon before and it wasn’t so bad that first time, was it? You can do this, Sunshine. Now buck up already.”

Justin tried to buck up. He stumbled along beside Brian as they walked down the alley towards the entrance of the dancing place. There were so many people lined up outside the building, it looked like a party. Justin was a little surprised when Brian didn’t lead him over to stand at the back of the long line. Instead, Brian boldly marched right up to the door, ignoring all the cat calls of the men they passed. Justin clung to Brian’s arm, feeling very self-conscious in his revealing clothing.

“Hey. Looks like Kinney’s got some fresh meat . . .” commented one guy who was wearing a pair of assless chaps and a mesh top with the chest area cut out. Justin almost tripped over his new Prada boots as he paused to stare at the man. 

Then another man in the line added, “. . . and he’s a tasty morsel, too. Hey, cutie! You sure you want to waste your time with Kinney? My cock is bigger and I promise to treat you right.”

“Fuck off. He’s not interested,” Brian growled at the men and moved around to Justin’s other side so that he was between his boyfriend and the ravening hordes of horny homos. 

“Come on, Kinney. Don’t be like that. We could at least share, right?” said a third, over-eager jokester.

“My mother always did say it was good to share, Brian,” Justin agreed, eyeing the man with the hairy, bare chest a little warily.

“Take it from me, Justin, this is not the kind of sharing your mother was talking about.” Brian explained.

Brian towed Justin away from the hecklers as fast as his stumbling feet could go. By that point they were already at the foot of the stairs up to the entrance, though, so Justin was distracted from the line of waiting guys. He remembered the huge, bald, mountain of a man that was standing by the front door from his last visit to the dancing place. Brian nodded at this big behemoth without a word. Justin thought that was a little rude. Brian and Mountainous Man seemed to know each other, so it was only polite to say hello, right? Sometimes Justin thought that Brian was a little bit unfriendly to people.

“Hello, Mountainous Man,” Justin took it upon himself to greet the man. “Thank you for letting us come into your dancing place. I really enjoyed myself the last time I was here, even though I was a little bit scared by all the noise and the people. My Brian has been teaching me all about people, though, and he promised that he wouldn’t let anyone here eat me, so I suppose it will be fine. I only want my boyfriend to eat me. We do lots of boyfriend things like that when we’re at home, you know? I’m even getting really good at hand jobs.”

“Uh . . . I bet you are, Sweetness. I bet you are,” Mountainous Man answered, giving Justin a little wink which caused Brian to growl under his breath. 

“Let’s go, Sunshine,” Brian ordered, putting his arm around Justin’s shoulders and possessively steering him away from the now-leering bouncer. “And, please, promise me you won’t be offering anyone here a hand job tonight, Justin. ‘Cause, if you’re not careful, one of these reprobates is gonna take you up on the offer.”

“Well, I do already have a job being an artist for your company, so I probably shouldn’t be doing those other jobs anyway,” Justin readily agreed as Brian paid the door charge for both of them and then towed him into the main room of the dancing place. “Except with you, in our home, of course. I don’t mind doing jobs with you, Just Brian.”

Brian couldn’t help but chuckle at the eager little blond. Justin’s enthusiasm for hand jobs, blow jobs, and any other little jobs Brian might come up with, was phenomenal. He’d been keeping Brian quite busy in the month since they’d come back from their big cross country adventure. Between all the fucking ‘Boyfriend Lessons’ and the towering workload of new ad campaigns they’d had to plow through, Brian had barely had time to take a step out of the loft in all that time. Needless to say, he hadn’t made it to Babylon once since their return. And, even more surprising, Brian hadn’t had the usual urge to go trolling for tricks. In fact, he hadn’t been with anyone other than Justin since before their trip. That was practically a miracle. But, with his insatiable and curious blond on hand all the time, he had felt uncharacteristically content. 

Maybe that was why he was feeling a little unsure about this first foray back into the world of Liberty Avenue’s night scene. He had rather enjoyed playing ‘boyfriends’ with his blond. Now that he was back in his familiar old playground, though, it was going to be hard not to fall back into the same patterns he’d had before Justin came along. The only reason he was here now was because Mikey had been so insistent about meeting up and had been giving him shit about letting his reputation as the Stud of Liberty Avenue be tarnished. Brian had eventually caved into Mikey’s demands but he still didn’t want to let Justin down. Somehow he would have to cope with the competing demands of his friends, his prior reputation, and his brand new relationship, all while fighting off his admiring fans. 

“Oh, look! There’s your tall friend. He’s waving at us,” Justin interrupted Brian’s mental litany of worries, pointing to where Emmett was, indeed, waving at them over the heads of the crowd. 

Brian wove through the mass of half-naked club boys towards where his friends were waiting for them, towing Justin along behind him. They’d barely reached the bar before Emmett was jumping up and down, clapping and glomming all over his blond. 

“BABY! I’m so happy you’re here. We were beginning to think that Brian was going to keep you locked up in the loft forever. I bet you’re glad you finally got cut loose from the Kinney Jail,” the tall Southern Queen exclaimed after kissing Justin’s cheek.

“Oh, no. Just Brian would never keep me locked up. He’s too nice. My mother used to keep me locked up all the time, though, and I didn’t like it one bit. Of course, that was mostly because of the voices, and I know she couldn’t help it, but I still didn’t like it. Brian would never do that to me. He likes to go out of the loft all the time so we can do adventures together. He’s getting pretty good at having fun. I’ve been teaching him,” Justin guilelessly over-explained.

“Okay . . . Well, that’s . . . revealing,” Em replied, looking to his friends for help with this odd conversation, without luck. “But, all I meant was that I was happy you came out tonight. We’ve all been dying to get to know you a little better, Baby.”

“Not to mention that Brian was probably more than ready to get a break from babysitting duty,” Michael added snottily. “It’s about time you got out to have some fun, Brian. You can’t stay holed up in your loft forever. Your public has missed you.”

“We weren’t on babysitting duty tonight,” Justin answered promptly. “We did get to keep Gus overnight last weekend - although Ms. Attorney didn’t seem very happy about it at first - but I think babysitting is fun. We took Gus to the park and then Brian let us eat junk food and we watched Disney movies. Gus wanted to watch a pirate movie too but I talked him into coloring instead. Actually, I wish we could do babysitting duty a lot more often. Gus is so sweet.”

“That’s not the baby I was talking about,” Michael groused under his breath. “Isn’t your blond boy a little young to be in a club like this, Brian? I didn’t think they let in fourteen year olds.”

“Now, Michael. Be nice,” Emmett warned him, which was a good thing because Brian was about to pop his old friend in the mouth if he kept that shit up. “How about this; while you and Brian take a minute to chat and get caught up, I’ll take Baby out on the dance floor. That way you can have Brian to yourself for a couple minutes. What do you say, Baby? Wanna go shake your tail feathers?”

“Well, I DO like to dance, but I don’t really have tail feathers,” Justin started to protest as Em pulled him away. “I can shake the rest of me pretty well, though.”

“Hands above the waist at all times, Honeycutt,” Brian warned with a glower as Emmett’s arm snaked a little too familiarly around the boy’s back. 

“Oooo! Jealous Brian; that’s so cute.”

And then they were gone, disappearing into the heaving mass of mostly-naked men gyrating to the thumpa-thumpa beat. 

“Finally! I thought that little shit was going to hang on you all night,” Mikey commented as soon as Justin was out of sight. “I can’t believe you actually let him move in with you, Brian. He’s totally cramping your style. And all his pretend innocence - how do you stand that? It would drive me nuts.”  

“Well, it’s a good thing you're not the one living with him then, Mikey.” Brian stated. “I, on the other hand, like having Justin around. He’s . . . refreshing.”

“Oh, come on, Brian. You can’t be serious. He’s so needy all the time; hanging on you like a little scaredy cat. Aren’t you tired of taking care of him 24/7? You’ve barely been out at all since you got back from your big trip.”

“I don’t know, Michael,” Ted intervened with his usual dry wit. “If I had a hot little blond with an ass like that around, I wouldn’t need to go out. Ever.”

Brian shot the accountant a warning glare, but Ted only shrugged and lifted his seltzer water in a silent toast to Justin’s admittedly glorious ass.

Michael apparently didn’t agree with the prevailing sentiment, though. “I suppose his ass must be okay - I mean, he’s cute enough, I guess - and if it wasn’t, Brian never would have bothered in the first place. But I’m sure by now you’re just dying to get some fresh meat, right, Bri? Face it, you’re not the kind of guy to limit yourself like that. Not for long, at least. So, who are you looking at for your first conquest of the night?”

Brian just shook his head at the idiocy of his oldest friend and turned his back on the man. Michael just didn’t get it. Brian wasn’t sure he got it all the time either. Whatever this thing was between him and Justin, it was too new and too fragile for him to have fully absorbed it yet. But, truthfully, Brian hadn’t missed the tricking or the club scene. Maybe Ted was right; once you had a hot little blond like Justin, you really didn’t need more. But, whatever the reason, Brian had to admit to himself that he wasn’t the least bit interested in tricking. In fact, all he really wanted at that moment was to go find his blond, dance a little, and enjoy their night out. So, ignoring Michael, Brian waved over the bartender, ordered a soda for his blond and a Beam for himself and then turned to survey the dance floor, hoping to catch a glimpse of his boy. 

Meanwhile, out in the middle of the club, Emmett was explaining his favorite dance move to the little neophyte. “I call it the ‘Praise Jesus’,” Em explained as he raised one arm into the air and waved it around his head while shimmying his hips from side to side. “It’s the only holdover from my days back in Hazelhurst, Mississippi, where I grew up. A move that’s equally acceptable in church and on the dance floor. What more can you ask for?”

Justin tried the new move, but wasn’t really feeling it. He quickly went back to his own, VH1-derived moves, and felt much more comfortable. He really liked the fun music they were playing here at the dancing place tonight. He could feel the pounding beat in his blood. Brian’s Tall Friend was nice, too, even if he did dance funny. Now, if only he didn’t have to wear the annoying shoes that were making his feet feel heavy and awkward. Justin was sure he could dance much better without the Pradas, as pretty as they were. 

So, without further ado, Justin kicked off the boots and really started to kick up his heels. 

“Oh, Sweetie, you’re hilarious!” Emmett crowed as he bent to gather the shoes up before they went missing. “You just be you, though, Baby. And keep on shaking that groove thing of yours. You’ll have all the boys here panting after you in no time.”

“If they’re panting, maybe they need to sit down and take a break from dancing. Once they catch their breath they’ll be able to dance much better, I would think,” Justin surmised innocently, causing Emmett to throw his head back and laugh. 

“Oh, Honey, you’re adorable. You really are. I could just eat you up.”

“Sorry, but Brian promised that he wouldn’t let anyone else eat me. I don’t want to be bitten by anybody but my boyfriend. I trust him not to bite too hard. It’s a boyfriend thing, you know?”

Emmett giggled at this declaration, “Have no fear, Baby. I won’t even take a nibble. I promise. I’ll just save up that little fantasy for later.”

Justin wasn’t sure about that statement. He didn’t think it was right for Brian’s friend to fantasize about biting him. What a strange thing to say, right? But, since the Tall Friend didn’t make any scary moves on him, Justin simply kept dancing. Now that he was unburdened by his shoes, he was really feeling it. He could dance for hours. It felt so freeing. 

“Hey, Todd! How’s tricks?” Emmett greeted someone walking past where he and Justin were dancing a few minutes later. 

“Fiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiine,” 

Justin saw Todd walk through an opening with hanging chains, “Doesn’t that hurt?” Justin, who didn’t remember seeing those hanging chains before, asked Emmett.

Emmett let out a soft chuckle while giving Justin an affectionate pat. The boy really was too adorable for words.

“Not in the least Baby, it’s like a door . . . only you don’t need to turn a knob to open it and go through.”

Justin nodded in acceptance of Emmett’s answer and continued to dance the evening away to the thumpa-thumpa of the music Babylon was famous for. After about two songs, though, a big man with no hair on his head and lots of hair on his face and chest danced closer to their spot on the floor and started to put his big meaty hands around the Tall Friend’s waist. Bald-But-Hairy was only wearing leather pants and no shirt, with some strange looking suspender-like straps that not only went over his shoulders, but we’re hooked across his chest with a big silver metal chain. Justin thought the man’s dancing costume was even more revealing than his own skimpy blue shirt. But, considering how hairy his chest was, at least the man probably didn’t feel cold. Justin giggled softly to himself, thinking privately that Bald-But-Hairy’s hairy chest reminded him of Sue Ellen Ewing’s fur coat from the episode of Dallas where they’d all gone skiing. It was THAT hairy.

As Justin watched, Tall Friend pushed his butt back against Bald-But-Hairy’s front parts. Next, the big man reached around and started playing with Tall Friend’s chest berries with one hand, as the other hand snaked down to squeeze Tall Friend's willy. Since Tall Friend didn’t seem to mind, Justin didn’t say anything, but what they were doing looked a lot like what Brian would do to him during their boyfriend lessons. He hadn’t known that Tall Friend had a boyfriend too, although they looked very happy together. Maybe even happy enough to be gay. Justin was very happy for them as well, because everyone deserved a boyfriend; not that any boyfriend could be as good as Brian.

When the music shifted into a new song, Bald-But-Hairy leaned down and whispered something into Tall Friend’s ear. The big southern queen nodded his head and moaned happily. Bald-But-Hairy hooked his finger into the front of Emmett’s pants and started to tug him off the dance floor. 

Tall Friend only paused long enough to turn back and toss Justin’s Pradas back at him with a, “bye Baby! Have fun!”

Justin grabbed the shoes but wasn’t quite sure what he was supposed to do next. Without Tall Friend there, he felt a little scared. There were lots and lots of men all around him, many of whom weren’t wearing very many clothes at all, and he didn’t know any of them. He quickly looked around, but couldn’t see Brian anywhere and, what with all the bright lights and loud music and too many people, he’d become a little turned around. He didn’t know which way to go in order to get back to where he’d left Brian standing near the bar. Without any other good options, Justin decided to follow along behind Tall Friend and Bald-But-Hairy and ask them for directions back to his Brian.

Standing on his tiptoes, Justin could see Tall Friend going through the opening with all the hanging chains over it, so he headed off in that direction as well.