It almost felt as if the air had been sucked right out of the room as the small television over the bar counted down the results. Glasses sat in front of patrons unmoved. Jaws slackened and "goddamn it!" whisper shouted across numb tongues. Shoulders slumped and fists clenched.

Two figures, both seemingly smaller than they were just hours earlier, turned their backs to the disheartened crowd and walked out onto the dark street. There were no smiles exchanged between them, no leering glances or teasing touches, only the grief and overwhelming sense of failure that tethered them.

Stockwell had won the election.

It was quiet, deathly so, with only the ambient hiss of gleeful cheers and random firecrackers being set off in the distance - a distance that seemed to taunt the pair with its paradoxical proximity.

Brian sat down on the steps of the bar, his hands hanging loosely between his knees and his shoulders bowed. "We fucked this up spectacularly," he said. "I fucked this up."

"Everyone fucked this up." Justin snaked his arm through Brian's and rested his head upon Brian's shoulder. He watched a pair of beat cops coming their way and his chin jutted out defiantly as they slowed their steps briefly as they passed by. "He lied and cheated and worked the mases up with a campaign of fear that their communities would fail and their children would be indoctrinated. That we are degenerates and rapists who care less about our society than they do," Justin said. "Hard to fight being ‘the Other'.

"I did that for him," Brian whispered. "I put him over the top and it was too fucking late to stop the fucking Stockwell Stampede when I tried."

"But you tried - and once you pulled your head out of your ass, you put everything on the line to stop him. We all enabled him by not seeing the real danger earlier."

Brian rubbed his hands over his face. He felt a bit hopeless at the moment, which was not a feeling he'd often admitted to, even to himself. "And now we're stuck with the fruits of our inadequate labors, condemned to hiding in our homes, toning down own freedoms to appease the ignorantly besotted masses."

Justin stood, pulling Brian up with him, sliding his arm around his lover's waist. "No. Now we go home and lick our wounds," he said. "And tomorrow and the next day and the day after that... we fight with every-fucking-thing we have until we get our city - and our freedom - back."

"You are one fucking idealistic little warrior, aren't you, Sunshine?"

Justin shrugged, but he'd heard the note of admiration in Brian's voice and smiled as he tucked it away for harsher times. "Ideals are all we have when we don't have our freedom, Brian. They're what make us fight when we're not sure of the win."

Brian pulled Justin tight against him and gazed out over the dimmed lights of Liberty Avenue. Yesterday it seemed so brilliant a place, infused with color and energy and the liberty after which it was named. It would be easier to let it go, to just slink off into the dark of realism and leave the fight to others, which is honestly what Brian's battered soul felt like doing right now. But he'd never backed down from a fight and this was not the time to begin a new tradition, however idealistic the fight may be.

"Let's go home, Little Rage, and lick some wounds, and tomorrow... we rise up and fight again."

"Licking and rising," Justin repeated, his lips turning up at the corners. "Sounds like a plan."