A few months ago, I would have insisted that while I had many admirers and perhaps a few pathetic sycophants, my true friends were in relatively short supply.

It’s funny how a benign six letter word, pun intended, could shift your entire perception of the world; especially after you’ve had your ass chewed out by a certain blond brat who has been known to disappear when you secretly want him to stay, and stubbornly refuse to leave when you not-so-secretly need him the most.

So, after enjoying more than thirty fucking years of excellent health thanks to my practically indestructible Irish genes, fate decided to give me a literal kick in the balls, in the form of testicular cancer.

I’d had my fair share of the usual childhood illnesses and broken bones, thanks to sports injuries and my Pop’s mean right hook, but once I’d reached legal age and removed myself from Jack’s abusive clutches, I’d very rarely been plagued with so much as the common cold.

Michael, of course, believed that due to the sheer volume of germs that I exposed myself to while I fucked my way through Gay Pittsburgh, I had built up an unnatural immunity to most strains of viruses and infections. Combine that with the excessive amounts of alcohol and recreational drugs I consumed in an average week, and he figured my body chemistry was probably toxic to most diseases known to man. With a best friend like that, who needed fucking enemies?

At any rate, it almost guaranteed that when my body finally decided to rebel, it would do so in a fabulously dramatic fashion that would include not only losing a favorite part of my anatomy, but would also come with the added bonus of uncontrollable bouts of vomiting, interspersed with stomach pain, diarrhea, and a constant debilitating fatigue that nothing seemed to improve.

It began when one of my tricks, who ironically happened to be a doctor, found the lump on my ball. It took me about five minutes to stop waiting for someone to jump out of the shadows of the back room shouting, “Brian Kinney, you’ve been punk’d!” But deep down inside, in the place where my demons and killer instincts dwelt together uneasily, I knew what the outcome would be. Good-bye Brian fucking Kinney, stud of the century; hello poor, pathetic, imperfect Brian, Pittsburgh’s own one-ball wonder. Is it surprising that death by fucking on the beaches of Ibiza sounded like an appealing solution?

However, brilliant adman that I am, I designed a flawless campaign guaranteed to dazzle the masses and keep my reputation as a consummate asshole intact; most importantly it would allow me to handle this fucking crisis the way I preferred to handle it. Alone.

I had already alienated Deb by my callous comments the night of Vic’s death, making my avoidance of the Liberty Diner perfectly understandable given those circumstances. Debbie had an often inconvenient ability to know when I was teetering closest to the edge of the proverbial cliff, and had offered me a lifeline on more than one occasion over the past twenty years. This time I was the invisible man to her, which meant no interrogations over lentil soup and lemon bars, or attempts to sweet talk me over weed and tuna noodle casserole.

Michael was a little trickier, but he was distracted by his innate need to worry uselessly over things beyond his control. The suddenness of Vic’s death had convinced him that given the odds he would be a grieving widow before the age of forty. Ben and Hunter’s HIV+ status made that a valid although hardly imminent concern. Add that to his general euphoria about his upcoming adventure into Daddyland and I was totally out of his field of vision. My flying off to Ibiza at the spur of the moment to tan my ass and fuck like a rabbit barely caused a ripple in his pond of domestic self-absorption.

Emmett and I were far from bosom buddies, and while I found his flaming ways to be an amusing diversion, there were times we went weeks before I spied his nelly ass sipping a cosmo at Babylon. Emmett was a high priestess in the cult of cunty, queer gossips. My misfortune would be fabuloso fodder for the pathetic queens of Liberty Avenue, but my visiting a queer paradise wouldn’t even be worthy of honorable mention in the gay grapevine. Avoiding Honeycutt was a piece of cake.

Lindsay would be suspicious, but I suspected she and her wife were having a few issues of their own. That and the impending birth of their next spawn would hopefully be enough distractions to keep her nose out of my affairs until after I’d returned, if I returned at all. I’d made sure long ago that she and Gus would be taken care of if I wasn’t around to do it myself. The possibility of Lindsay finding out was a bridge I’d cross only if I came to it.

Theodore would be too freaked out about what my absence would mean to his constant Kinnetik number crunching to really wonder what the fuck I was up to.

Cynthia reacted like the bitch that she is, which allowed me to keep my focus and made me grateful as hell that she was loyal to me, even if this was the rare occasion that had her unable to understand my reasoning.

No, no one in my circle of friends would bat an eyelash or give a shit in the long run as to why I was high-tailing it to Ibiza for a vacation I really didn’t need.

I was actually feeling pretty fucking smug about the way I was handling the whole cancer situation when I ran into a blond brick wall that looked amazingly like the guy I fucked on a regular basis, Justin “I’m- On-To-You” Taylor.

He was waiting for me at the loft when I got home from work after he’d witnessed my minor fucking meltdown at Kinnetik earlier that afternoon.

I paused in the doorway and considered telling him to fuck off, but the heavy-handed approach rarely worked with him, so I shot him a sarcastic smile as I tossed my briefcase on the floor, followed by my coat.

“Here to help me pack my underwear, darling?” I inquired sweetly, slightly disquieted by his grim expression.

“Not exactly, Brian.” He answered seriously, and I suddenly noticed the nervous energy that was surrounding him like some sort of invisible shield. Shit! When he had left my office, he wasn’t happy with me, but he had seemed like he’d accepted my decision to leave him behind.

“I came back here to pick up some of the stuff I might need while you’re gone. I wanted to bring them back to Daphne’s so I wouldn’t have to mess with the security system later.”

“That’s fine, Justin. You know perfectly well you can stay here whenever the fuck you want, whether I’m here or not.” I was watching him warily now. I knew him well enough to know that when he started to explain stupid shit like this, he was simply circling around something else and it was usually something I wasn’t going to like. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong, Brian.”

Yeah right, and I was supposed to believe that. “Look, if you’re still pissed about Ibiza, I just need some time to my—“

“Who’s Dr. Rabinowitz?” he interrupted me and stepped closer.

I fought the urge to back away from the blue fire that was starting to burn in his eyes as he waited for my response.

“None of your fucking business, Sunshine!"

It was time to make his anger work for me. Invasion of my privacy really did piss me off, and if I could just get him upset enough to storm off in a huff, it would make everything so much easier when I got back from Baltimore.

“And before you try to distract me with any of your pathetic bullshit, I want you to know that I haven’t been looking through your stuff. Now, who’s Dr. Rabinowitz?”

“How did you hear his name?” I countered, not willing to give an inch until I knew he wasn’t just fishing around.

“His office called here a few minutes ago and left a message for you; I couldn’t help but overhear it.” He didn’t look as angry now; instead he was looking fucking worried. Double shit!

I opened my mouth to say something cruel, but I found myself just shaking my head in defeat.

“Brian.” His voice was a hoarse whisper as he came up to me and wrapped his arms around my neck. “They were calling to confirm your surgery at John Hopkins on Wednesday.”

I closed my eyes and stroked the back of his head, but just as in my office earlier today, the words were locked in my throat.

He stirred against me and pulled away, his fingers reaching for my cheek, his hand trembling slightly as he ran his thumb across my bottom lip. “What surgery, Brian?” he asked quietly. “Please, I need to know. I love you and I want to help you.” His voice broke and I opened my eyes and met his anxious gaze.

Suddenly, I was tired of being Brian Kinney: selfish, narcissistic, promiscuous asshole. I had no illusions that I wasn’t all of those things, but after these past few weeks of hell those certainly weren’t the only things I wanted to be. For whatever fucked up reason, Justin loved me despite my laundry list of flaws and had seen something else when he let me take him home that first night outside of Babylon.

I wanted to believe that this time he really meant it when he said he would be here for me, even before he really knew what he was promising. I struggled my desire to finally really treat him as my partner and let him share completely in the shit that was about to invade my life. Yet I fought the instinct that insisted that he would eventually leave again anyway, and to simply let this disease speed things along as the kinder option for both of us.

He was still watching me. Concerned and confused, but still so stubbornly determined to get his way; to ferret out the truth even if it was the last thing I wanted to tell him.

“It’s cancer, Justin.” I let the words drop between us like a bomb, explosive and unable to be unspoken. I watched blankly as horror and fear flashed across his face. He backed away from me and dropped awkwardly onto the sofa, looking pale and nauseous. I felt a small twinge of guilt for not telling him more gently, but Justin knew by now not to expect hearts and flowers from me.

I saw the temptation he felt to reject my words, his mind already working on ways to make this reality less horrible than it was. I could see I had rendered him speechless for maybe only the second time since I’d known him. I felt smug for all of two seconds before I sat down next to him and gave him the gory details.

“It’s testicular cancer. I’m scheduled to get my diseased ball cut out on Wednesday in Baltimore. They’ll run a biopsy on the tumor and if it’s cancerous and hasn’t spread, they’ll zap me with radiation for about six weeks, and then see if by some miracle of modern medicine they’ve managed to cure me instead of kill me.”

Justin stared at me for a moment and then nodded his head weakly, accepting that what I had told him really was the truth, and he closed the distance between us and held onto me tightly. We stayed that way for quite a while, and I had to admit I felt some of the tension I’d been holding inside start to fade away as I let his warmth surround me and comfort me.

Eventually, he rested his head against my shoulder and began to speak, keeping his tone even and calm, making me listen to what he had to say.

“Book me a seat on your flight; you are not doing this alone. I don’t care about anything else, like what you were thinking in trying to handle this on your own, but it’s all bullshit, and it’s my right as your lover to be at your side, not clueless with everyone else back here in Pittsburgh.”

When he finished speaking, he took my right hand which was lying limply on my lap, and joined our fingers together firmly. I turned my head and pressed a kiss into his hair, too drained to even make a stab at an argument that I knew from experience he would ultimately win.

He raised our joined fingers to his lips and just held them there while we simply breathed together, trying to find our balance before life gave us another shove.

Eventually, he went into the bedroom to pack, and I managed to book him on my flight. I stood at the bottom of the bedroom steps and watched him, cringing as he shoved essentials into his ratty old duffel. I was grateful that this time the duffel wasn’t taking him away from me, but I only raised an eyebrow when he caught me glaring at it.

Finally, he was ready and it was time to go. He kissed me hungrily as the taxi took us to the airport. I know he wanted to suck me off and pretend that nothing had changed, but when he tried to slip his hand down the front of my pants I stopped him silently. He sighed in frustration and I saw the lights of the airport appear in front of us before he spoke.

“You know, the shit is really gonna hit the fan when you get back. You’ll be lucky to keep your other ball intact after Lindsay and Debbie are done with you.”

“Yeah, but I’ve got this fucking awesome secret weapon now.” I rolled my lips into my mouth and nudged his shoulder gently.

“A secret weapon. Huh. And what’s that?” His expression was lost in the shadows, but I heard the hopefulness that I usually managed to crush hiding just beneath the surface.

“Someone to watch over me.”