Or kiss. Or fuck. It depends, really.

Brian and Justin spend so much time together that at some point Aidan stops talking to Justin completely, and that’s fine with all three of them. Or so it’s seems. Somehow Justin appears to fit right into their well-oiled perfectly working machine, except for these couple of mornings when he wakes naked in bed with Aidan.

Aidan is way too boring to pretend to be Brian (not that he would ever succeed) or even throw a fit, anyway. He just acts embarrassed and sneaks a few glances at Justin while they dress up. Justin doesn’t mind. Brian does, though, so at the third morning when that happens, another sneaked glance like that triggers him to front and jump on Justin to fuck him possessively. That Justin doesn’t mind either.

A life with half a time than everyone else has spent with your lover is not easy, by all means. But they manage. Sometimes Justin even has a glass of guava juice with Aidan while they discuss modern day art.

Sometimes a co-conscious Brian chimes in through Aidan, and of course he has nothing else to say about abstractionism but the usual comments about cat vomit. Justin is really surprised that Aidan even bothers to voice his thoughts at all.

They manage, they really do. Up until Brian disappears.

Aidan still shows up at work every day, but there is no Jeep and no Brian after. Justin gives him space, or he is trying to, while constantly wondering what could be wrong. He learned long ago that Brian and Aidan did have separate phone numbers, but neither one picks up.

So, after two weeks of suspense, Justin has nothing else left to do but force his way into Aidan’s office once again.

“I don’t have a knife on me, don’t worry,” Justin tells him right away. “What is happening, Aidan?”

“I’m firing Cynthia for letting you in again,” Aidan replies, harsher than usual, and doesn’t even lift his eyes from the papers in front of him. “That’s what’s happening.”

“I snuck in,” Justin lies just in case. “And I’m serious. Where is Brian?”

Aidan’s studied shell of callousness gives a crack as his eyes stop darting around the papers in pretend business. His shoulders fall, and next thing Justin knows Aidan buries his face in his hands, exhausted. For that, he needs to remove his glasses first, so Justin almost gets excited at the signature gesture.

But no Brian.

“You don’t know?” Aidan finally lifts his head, a few of his eyelashes stick together funnily and that would have probably made Justin smile under any other circumstances. “I should have figured he wouldn’t tell you. Way too proud.”

“Tell me what?” Justin urges, stepping closer. Aidan lets out a now-or-never kind of sigh.

“I- we. Brian and I. We have cancer,” after a second or two of complete silence Aidan gestures towards the chair near his desk and only then Justin feels that his legs are ready to fail him.

There are no usual thoughts. Justin’s head seems empty, as if he is five again and was just pushed off a swing and onto the ground, all the air knocked out of his lungs. He descends heavily on the char and runs a quick glance over Aidan’s whole body, which is not at all lost on Aidan himself.

“The body is functional,” Aidan says firmly, voicing Justin’s thoughts. “For now. Brian is in no shape to front, though, so I’m finishing my last arrangements and preparing for the surgery.”

“What do you mean in no shape?”

“He didn’t take the news lightly.”

“I suppose he didn’t,” Justin assumes in a mere whisper. “Not used to being weak.”

“Exactly,” Aidan confirms and his face suddenly softens. “Afraid you will see him weak, too.”

“Aidan, please,” Justin frowns, not looking at Aidan at all, way too scared to see any trace of Brian in him and actually start crying. He bites his bottom lip. “Could you just… let him know. Let him know that I want to help? And that I really,” he swallows hard. “Really miss him.”

“What?”

Justin holds his hand. He doesn’t care about supporting Aidan as much as about potentially making Brian inside this body jealous and forcing him to come out by the gesture. After all he does for Aidan, it doesn’t even feel that horrible.

Then again, he mostly does it for Brian. So that he has a body to return to, in the best shape possible.

Justin spends all of his free time with Aidan, helps him around with everything, talks to doctors, makes work calls, answers work calls, carries checks over to both the loft and the mansion for the cleaning lady to pick up. Justin takes Aidan’s life completely in his own hands, simply for Brian. Or for a slim glimmer of hope.

Brian never once shows up during these days.

“The darkness,” Aidan repeats, some hospital tech beep-beep-beeping on the background. “When we were little, me and Brian, whenever it would get… bad. I’d run away. Inside my head, just… switch off. Let Brian take over, let him deal with whatever is happening,” he sighs, chest heaving under the crispy white sheet. For a moment it amazes Justin how different he and Brian actually are. His mind trails back to the old times when he was unable to tell them apart, but he forces it to stay present. “And each time that happened, darkness would take me. For a while. But there was always a point to come back, you know? A new cartoon episode or mom baked a cake or something. And then, as I got older, there was Brian,” just hearing his name, Justin squeezes Aidan’s hand unknowingly tighter. “Because I knew he needed me, in his way. But now… he has you. And I’m too old for cartoons. And since I learned what carbs are, cakes stopped being fun, too.”

“You don’t know what you’re missing, Aidan,” Justin decides to pick a lighthearted route and smiles softly. “We’ll get you a cake after surgery, alright? As soon as your doctor allows. A chocolate one, they’re the best.”

“The darkness, Justin,” Aidan tells him again, looking straight into his eyes. “Ever since you and him got together, I thought, what is the point of coming back? And I saw none.”

“Aidan…”

“Tell me,” Aidan runs his thumb gently over the scar on Justin’s palm, the one from the letter opener stunt. “Honestly. Who are you here for, Justin?”

At least a dozen of beautiful, uplifting, graceful lies twirl and spin and dance around in Justin’s mind. They spark up like fireworks, they shimmer and glisten and beg to be voiced, and then Justin opens up his mouth.

“Him,” he says. He stares at Aidan and repeats confidently: “Him.”

Aidan’s head moves slowly; a few tiny knowing nods, pillowcase rustling underneath.

“I figured.”

“Mr. Kinney,” the doctor calls behind Justin’s shoulder.

Aidan closes his eyes. And then they roll him out of the room and Justin is quickly ushered away into the corridor, left alone with hours and hours of dim blue wall hospital waiting. Nothing good crosses his mind during that time, nothing bad does either. He sits, his head thrown back, his eyes closed, and just listens to the hum and muttering of the hospital.

Aidan is in surgery for several hours, then in special care for a few more, and then they finally return him to his own room and let Justin hold his hand once again.

Justin does. He does through half a night, right until Aidan opens his eyes once again, tech beep-beep-beeping on the background.

“Sunshine?”

At first, Justin doesn’t realize it, since he is up for nearly twenty-four hours at this point and a few whispered sounds barely even register in his mind. And then he identifies the word spoken as indeed ‘sunshine’, and Aidan has never once called him sunshine, not even before Justin and Brian got together.

“Brian,” Justin’s voice falters and instead of saying anything he holds Brian’s hand up to his mouth and peppers it hastily with small kisses.

Kisses that quickly become wet and salty.

“I guess we are in survival mode since I’m here,” Brian groans as he tries to move, and Justin doesn’t know what is it that really stops him: the physical pain or Justin’s death glare. “Alright. I’ll try that again later.”

“You better,” Justin mutters under his breath.

Brian looks at him for a long-long while, maybe for a whole minute, and something very serious flashes at the bottom of his large sad eyes.

“I missed you,” he says simply.

As each new day passes, Justin’s anger starts to melt away, until it disappears completely. To be exact, it is swallowed whole by the overwhelming joy of that first time when Brian really smiles at him upon discovering the fact that he can be discharged the next morning.

Of course, he doesn’t smile at the doctor, he waits long enough for her to leave the room. It would have been sappy any other way, and Brian doesn’t do sappy.

Aidan doesn’t front once during the recovery, not even when Cynthia calls and asks how is he feeling. Brian handles the call well, but is left with a puzzled expression Justin can only classify as ‘how-did-I-not-notice’ sort of frown.

“You are just protecting him, Brian, as you always were,” Justin tells him. He mentions nothing about his and Aidan’s last conversation. “He’ll show up when you’re healthy.”

After a week spent at the loft being fed chicken soup, Brian is finally fit to drive and the first place they go is an abstract art gallery. Justin doesn’t ask, he knows. He knows Brian wants to potentially trigger Aidan out or at least talk to him for the first time after surgery.

“He didn’t get scared when we found out,” Brian’s voice is low and raspy after their long, silent drive. “I did. I got scared, Justin. Remember, I told you I-”

“You don’t get scared, I remember,” Justin cuts in, and then he puts a warm comforting hand on Brian’s denim-clad thigh. “It’s natural, Brian. People get scared of things.”

“I thought you’d see me like this and leave,” Brian says, and Justin feels a pang of pure sadness as he squeezes his palm. “And that would be the last thing I remember because after I’d just… die.”

“Brian,” Justin whispers. He wants to cry and confess something very melodramatic, but he knows Brian better than that. So, wearing a mock-sorrowful expression he leans closer, supporting himself with his palm flat on Brian’s thigh and says: “Don’t be a drama princess, they only cut off one of your balls.”

Seeing a corner of Brian’s lips slowly jerk in what later becomes a full-on grin actually makes Justin’s heart feel at ease. At least for now.

“Eat shit,” Brian chuckles and they both hop out of the car and into the foggy, gray street.

Their steps echo from the marble floors and ricochet off of the empty gallery walls. The middle-aged supervising lady’s glasses catch light and glisten as she moves her head along with Brian and Justin's movements.

“That is cat vomit.”

“No, that’s Kandinsky.”

“Okay, that is certainly fucking cat vomit.”

Justin flinches slightly at the word ‘certainly’. Before today it was mostly just collecting dust in Brian’s vocabulary, barely ever used. Aidan liked it, though, but Justin pays little attention to that fact for now.

“How very unpatriotic. That’s Pollock.”

“Is that a snatch?”

“One can interpret art as they want. But it’s actually an iris flower.”

“Since when are you such a smartass?”

“If we’d spent half a time talking that we spend fucki-”

“I’ll stop you there. If that’s what it takes, I’ll pass,” Brian steps closer to another picture as he wraps his arm around Justin’s waist to pull him close. “This is literally just orange on red. What is so special about this to hang it here?”

“There is also a bit of yellow,” Justin adds carefully while throwing a quick look on the supervising lady. She doesn’t seem to mind them disrespecting art, as long as they content themselves with verbal disrespect only. “Aidan liked- likes this one. It’s Rothko.”

“Aidan hates red,” Brian states hesitantly. His eyes move over the painting hastily, long lashes fluttering.

“He told me it makes him feel more like you,” Justin whispers, staring at Brian’s profile.

He isn’t lying, Aidan did tell him that once, during one of their guava juice art conversations. Justin hasn’t ever been a big fan of Rothko’s work, but after the remark about Brian he looked at the paintings in a whole different light. Sharp figures, blurry angles. Simplistic, but catches your eye. Aggressive, but inviting.

So Brian. Justin assumes no one knows Brian better than Aidan does.

Or did, anyway.

“I feel like I’ve seen this one before,” Brian frowns and his arm on Justin’s waist tenses. “Maybe it’s just because you said… all that.”

“Maybe,” Justin shrugs and tip-toes for a second to plant a brief wet kiss on Brian’s jaw. It feels scratchy.

They stand like this for quite a while longer: Brian staring at “Orange, Red, Yellow” and Justin staring at Brian, each admiring a masterpiece before their eyes.

Aidan still doesn’t come out. He doesn’t come out even after doctor at the next check-up announces that Brian is completely healthy.

“He doesn’t talk to me anymore,” Brian says from behind his office desk as Justin props his thigh against the side of it and looks softly down at Brian. “It fucking annoying… I mean it’s so infuriatingly quiet.”

Infuriatingly quiet. Brian’s vocabulary does seem to improve ever since the discharge from the hospital, and the more Justin hears him speak like Aidan the more suspicious he gets. Long time ago, during his ass-still-burning-from-Brian’s-grope internet spree on any information about multiple personality disorders, he did learn that they can possibly merge. It doesn’t work for everyone, but for some people.

Is that what’s happening?

“Aidan,” Cynthia comes in right after her three pro forma knocks on the door. Her face expression doesn’t promise anything good. “Leo Brown just called. He wants the font changed to the one you suggested at the meeting, and… he didn’t tell which one. And I don’t even have it written down, I just checked everything.”

Justin was at the meeting too and he tries his best to remember what Aidan had suggested, but nothing comes to mind. Leo is either toying with them, or just a complete idiot, along with Cynthia herself who didn’t even bother to write it down back at the meeting, double check back at the meeting, or at least politely ask for a reminder on the call today.

“Call him back?” Justin says in a ‘duh’ sort of fashion.

“Corbel,” Brian answers at the same time.

Justin’s mind goes blank as Cynthia announces a chirpy “I love you, boss!” and quickly leaves the office.

“Corbel?” he asks, pushing off of the table he’s been leaning on. “How did that happen?”

“I have no idea either, Corbel looks fucking ugly on that board if you ask me.”

“That’s not what I mean.”

Brian lets out a long sigh. “Just came up in my head, that’s it. I’m no phycologist, Justin.”

“Alright,” Justin chews on the inside of his cheek as he darts his eyes aside. “So that’s how you kept the job? By things just coming up in your head?”

To be honest, Justin had always believed in Brian and knew he could manage to back Aidan up in case anything ever happens. As much as Brian wanted to seem like a brainless jock at times, he spent his whole life in Aidan’s head (not that Justin had ever planned on telling him anything even remotely along the lines of that), and that had to count for something.

“Pretty much,” Brian shrugs and suddenly flashes a cheeky smirk at Justin. “Just so you know, things are not only coming up inside my head, they’re also-”

Justin rolls his eyes. “Don’t even go there.”

Much later, while laying on the couch at the loft, head on Brian’s lap, Justin focuses on the man’s face way more intently than on television screen. They’re watching “The Beyond”, driven by Brian’s sudden fixation on old horror classics, and twenty years after its release the movie doesn’t even seem like a horror anymore.

Justin actually has a couple of laughs, right until he notices Brian wince at the sight of blood. Brian doesn’t freak out, doesn’t get pale, doesn’t say anything really, just winces slightly while his fingers stop stroking Justin’s hair for a split second. On the other hand, the blood is obviously artificial, since the movie is too old to have any believable makeup or effects in it.

Justin decides not to comment and relaxes under the soft hand that is playing with his hair once again.

Brian carries a blissful so-not-there look on his face. His whole body glistens with sweat and his back is not even sticky, it’s just straight up wet under Justin’s hasty needy palms as he runs them up and down Brian’s skin, sometimes burying his nails into it and earning himself a groan or two through Brian’s gritted teeth. Brian is not even Brian anymore, not even human anymore. He is a liquid shining feral beast that hunts and preys and gets to the deepest, unreachable places of Justin’s.

Justin’s bones seem like they have melted into fairy dust, ran through the pipes of his veins and enchanted his blood to hum. He feels hot, limp, physically inexistent except for the one very place Brian is reaching with his throbbing cock. That depth is the only place Justin has left to sense, each thrust sending his mind over the edge, again-again-again until he finally rips open and spills and splashes and explodes with all the shimmer and glitter and magic that had swelled inside of him.

“Fuck me,” Brian wheezes as he rolls on his back and pulls a filled condom off of his dick in one motion.

Squeaky sounds of latex being tied in a knot, a swish of a flying condom, a whack of a condom landing on the hardwood floors.

“Thought you’d never ask,” Justin says breathlessly, but doesn’t actually attempt anything. Partially because he is absolutely exhausted, but mostly because Brian wouldn’t in a million years let him top.

Aidan? Maybe. Not Brian. But Aidan hasn’t been out for months at this point.

“Shut up,” Brian chuckles dismissively, and then suddenly adds: “I’ll consider someday.”

Okay, maybe a million years had just been scaled up to ‘someday’. Justin lets his daring mind wonder and pretend how could that feel to top Brian and how could his ass clench around Justin’s cock and how-

“I wanted to show you something,” Brian’s voice yanks Justin out of his thoughts and back into reality. “Hang on.”

“Does it look like I’m going anywhere?”

Thin, watery blue twilight in the room slowly melts away as the dawn grows nearer. Justin lies sprawled on his back, listening to Brian’s bare feet slap-slap-slapping around the loft, across the living room, to the bathroom, and then finally back. It takes Justin a second to figure that Brian took his time to discard the condom into trash.

Just one of many Aidan-like things he now does. His tolerance level for any mess decreased drastically in the last few months.

“Here,” a cold rectangle-shaped piece of plastic lands on Justin’s chest, somewhere between his nipples. Justin frowns as he pushes himself up on his elbows and receives a pair of raised eyebrows in return. “Go on, take a fucking look already.”

Somewhere at the back of his mind Justin actually feels somewhat frightened, although the feeling is so far-far away and flimsy Justin smothers it dead in no time. It takes him a couple of flat palm slaps to feel the object up and peel it off his sticky chest, and another couple of confused blinks to realize it’s in fact an ID card.

Not just any, but Brian’s ID card. The one that says “Brian Aidan Kinney” on it.

And even has his picture with no glasses on.

“You didn’t tell me,” is the first thing Justin finds himself say in a muttered undertone. The feelings are conflicted: he is happy for Brian, offended for himself, and scared for Aidan.

He scoops himself up on the silken bedsheet and sits upright with his legs crossed, staring at Brian intently. He expected to be a part of a decision like this, or at the very least be there with Brian while he takes the picture.

“Didn’t want to,” Brian shrugs simply, flopping backwards on the mattress, an already lit cigarette in hand. “Not until it was done, anyway.”

“You didn’t tell me,” Justin repeats.

Brian watches him at the corner of his eye, taking a long drag. “I didn’t tell him either, so it’s only fair.”

“Not that you had a chance,” Justin sighs. “What if he gets mad when he returns?”

Pause, exhale, smoke twirling above their heads in a few very first rays of sunlight.

“What if he never returns?” Justin’s favorite thing to do is watch Brian’s lashes flutter while his eyes dart around. “Besides, I did keep his name. Somewhat.”

“Okay.”

“Okay?”

‘Darkness calls me in’ Justin thinks over and over again as he curls up to Brian’s side. Justin presses his nose tight against Brian’s chest and drags it up, trailing it all the way to his neck, inhaling a lungful after lungful of his smell; salt and honey and musk.

“You want me to tell you I’m proud of you?” Justin finally asks. “You know I am.”

“I know you are.”

“And he would be, too.”

Brian rubs his fingertips over the back of Justin’s neck as they lay silently, surrounded by sunlight spilling over the windowsills and into the bedroom. If Justin were to throw his head back right now and look at the city behind the window, flopped upside down, he would see the yellow sun peaking above the red dawn horizon line, spilling its shimmery liquid light that, after piercing the clouds, becomes orange.

Justin has never considered himself to be a truly great artist, but looking at Brian squinting beside him with the sun covering his golden skin, Justin thinks that these particular shades of orange, red and yellow he finds to be perfect.