Chapter 38 - Drastic Measures.

"Twenty-seven messages!" Justin exclaimed vociferously while Daphne sat passively and, like a good friend, let the guy vent. "Twenty-seven! Can you believe the gall of that asshole?” Justin’s continued raving was interrupted briefly by a *bing bing* from his phone alerting him to yet another incoming text message. “Fuck! Make that Twenty-Eight now. And, if it wasn’t bad enough that Brian’s been annoying me nonstop all day, he’s even got his secretary - some chick named Cynthia - calling and texting me too. What do I have to do to get him to stop and just leave me alone!” Justin angrily tapped at the icon on his phone to delete the latest message without even looking at it.

At that point, Justin seemed to finally let up enough that Daphne could actually make a comment. “Um, Jus, have you actually listened to any of the messages or read the texts? I mean, it might actually be something other than him just stalking you, you know. Don’t you think that maybe even Brian wouldn’t have called and texted you twenty-eight times in one day unless it was important?”

“No! I’m not going to read his drivel, Daphne. I’m sure it’s just more of the same. Just Brian thinking he can bully me into letting him have another chance. Well, this is one time that he’s just going to have to learn that he doesn’t always get his way . . .”

Daphne wasn’t at all upset when a knock on the door gave her a legitimate excuse to get up and abandon her post as the sympathetic ear for her friend. While Justin muttered on to himself, Daphne jumped off the couch and practically leapt towards the door, grateful for any respite. She had only just barely cracked the door open though, when the door was forcefully pushed open, knocking her backwards onto her ass on the carpet. As she was lying there, still in shock and wondering if this was the start of some horrific home-invasion, the injured girl got her first glimpse of the thug pushing his unwanted way into the apartment.

It was none other than a harried and desperate looking Brian Kinney.

“Jesus Roosevelt Christ, Brian. What the fuck do you think you’re doing, busting in here like that. Get the fuck out, right this minute,” Daphne griped as she rubbed at her now bruised ass and slowly got back onto her feet.

Brian, whose gaze had immediately focused in on the man he was there seeking, completely ignored the girl on the floor and stalked over to his wayward blond boy. “Justin. Finally! You’re a very difficult man to get ahold of, Sunshine,” Brian commented with a small smile on his face that was part sexy smirk, part needy lustfulness and part bashful embarrassment.

“Get the fuck out of here, Brian. I don’t want to talk to you,” Justin growled, turning his back and standing there with his legs in a wide stance and his arms crossed, clearly not in an open mood.

“Good, because I don’t want you to talk. I want you to listen. Are you listening, Sunshine?” Brian came up behind Justin and quickly put his left hand on the younger man’s shoulder in an attempt to at least establish some physical contact.

“No! I’m not listening, you fucking moron. I’m out of here!” Justin insisted, tearing away from Brian’s grip and stomping off towards the dining table where his jacket was slung over the back of one of the chairs.

“Justin. Please, Sunshine, I just want to talk . . . Justin, wait! JUSTIN!” Brian watched hopelessly while Justin donned his jacket and started to gather up his wallet and other small items, clearly serious about leaving without hearing Brian out.

The almost frantic Brian took two large paces towards Justin where he was still puttering around the dining table. He had to do something to make Justin stop. If the stupid little twat would just give him five minutes to explain, Brian knew he’d have a chance. How could he make Justin stay long enough to listen to him? How? There had to be some way . . .

That’s when Brian’s eye was caught by the sight of the big red gift box sitting on the end of the dining table. It was the very same gift box full of sex toys that he’d sent to Justin earlier in the week. Part of the contents from the box were spilled out over the surface of the table where the apartments’ residents had pawed through the various goodies. And by some fortuitous accident, the one item that was closest to where Brian was standing just happened to be a pair of fuzzy black handcuffs that had been included in the gift box.

“Do NOT be here when I get back, Brian!” Justin spat out venomously, his expression so hostile that it froze a little piece of Brian’s already wounded heart.

And that’s when Brian simply lost it. Without even consciously thinking about it, the desperate man grabbed ahold of the pair of handcuffs sitting on the table edge, reached around Justin’s shoulder and snapped one cuff around the younger man’s left wrist. Then, without hesitating even a moment, he snapped the other cuff around his own larger right wrist. Brian also grabbed up the key to the cuffs, which came with its own fuzzy keychain fob, from where it was waiting on the tabletop and shoved the whole thing down the front of his pants.

“What the FUCK!” the incensed and now handcuffed blond boy screamed while he yanked his arm back, futilely trying to twist his wrist out of the fur-lined metal. “What the hell do you think you’re doing, Brian. Have you gone totally insane? Give me the fucking key right this fucking minute!”

“No.” Brian stubbornly replied.

“No? NO? You don’t get to just say, ‘NO’, Brian. Get these cuffs off of me NOW!”

“No, Sunshine. I’m not going to take them off until you fucking listen to me,” Brian insisted, and only shrank back a tiny bit in the face of the enraged twink advancing on him, clearly intent on ripping off Brian’s arm if that was the only way to get the cuffs off.

“Give me the keys!” Justin howled and tore at the waistband of Brian’s jeans, focused solely on getting to the fuzzy fob hidden in his pants.

With a strong tug, Justin easily managed to pop the top button on Brian’s pants. Brian tried in vain to scoot away from Justin’s questing hands but was hampered by the fact that he was now tethered to the boy by the wrist. With single-minded intent, Justin shoved his free hand down the front of Brian’s pants and started groping around for something small, hard, cold and fuzzy - i.e. the key. The fuzzy part wasn’t really all that difficult - there was always a lot of fuzziness associated with Brian’s crotch - but most of the parts Justin grabbed onto were nice and warm. You might even say they were hot. And the more Justin scrounged around down there, the harder and warmer most of the contents of Brian’s jeans got. Before too long, there wasn’t much that could be described as ‘small’ down there either.

With all the groping and rooting about in his pants, Brian rather quickly forgot about the fact that he was supposed to be trying to keep Justin out of his knickers. Rather than squirming away from the fumbling fingers, Brian moaned rather loudly and found himself melting into Justin’s touch. Which, although completely understandable since he’d been without any Sunshine gropage for far too long, was of course a huge error in judgment on his part. As soon as Brian stopped fighting, Justin almost immediately latched onto the item he’d been after in Brian’s pants, and to Brian’s disappointment it wasn’t his cock.

“Aha!” Justin crowed in triumph as he finally extricated the fuzzy keyfob from the front of Brian’s now rather full pants.  

Brian shook his lust-clouded head a few times and luckily came back to his senses while Justin was still fumbling around trying to get the miniscule key into the small hole in the underside of the metal part of the cuff.

“No! I’m not letting you get away until you listen to me, Justin!” Brian insisted, deftly pulling the fuzzy keys out of Justin’s grasp and chucking them across the room as far as he could.

“Damn you, Brian!” Justin shrieked and tried to run after the keys.

Brian merely planted his feet and used his bulk to hold his ground, causing Justin to jerk back at the end of his cuffed reach and rebound back against the sturdy larger man’s chest. Brian took advantage of Justin’s being off balance, to scoop him up bodily and deposit the struggling blond bundle onto the nearby couch. When Justin immediately started to stand up, obviously intent on making another attempt to reach the keys, Brian did the first thing he thought of, pushing the struggling blond back into the couch cushions and sitting on his chest.

“Get off of me, Brian! GET OFF!”

Justin fought and squirmed and tried to twist his way out from under the weight of Brian’s body, but to no avail. Brian simply refused to budge except to make himself even more comfortable on his Justin perch. After a good five minutes of this senseless battle, Justin, now exhausted, fell quiet and ceased his wiggling. For several moments more the only sound in the small apartment was Justin’s panting. Slowly, however, the silence was broken by the gleeful peal of Daphne’s laughter.

“Stop laughing and help me over here, Daphne,” Justin complained, trying his best to give his friend the evil eye from his uncomfortable position smooshed between the cushions and Brian’s boney ass.

All Justin’s pleading only made Daphne laugh even harder. Looking at the two of them through her eyes, Brian soon saw the humor in the situation and before long his low chuckling joined Daphne’s more riotous giggles. Justin, stubborn little twat that he was, refused to admit there was anything even remotely amusing about his predicament and just lay there pinned underneath Brian and fumed. For a good ten minutes. While Brian and Daphne laughed their fucking heads off at him. And made Justin even more pissed off. And annoyed. And . . . well, it WAS a little bit funny, Justin finally conceded in his own mind, but he wasn’t going to let those two oafs know that. At least not until he’d got Brian to let him up.

“Fucking fine . . .” Justin knew he had no choice and gave in with poor grace. “Fine, okay. I’ll fucking listen to you. So . . . talk already, asshole!”

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After Brian and Daphne eventually quelled their laughter, and Brian agreed to let Justin sit on the couch the correct way up, he launched into a long winded explanation of the twenty-eight phone messages and texts, the teensy-tiny woman with the badass sense of humor, and his bosses’ imperative that Justin Taylor WOULD be doing the artwork for this campaign. As soon as Justin heard that the project was for his favorite museum - The Metropolitan Museum of Art - he was all ears. And by the end of the explanation, it seemed like Justin had forgotten his previously strenuous dislike for Brian Kinney, the man, in his enthusiasm for working with Brian Kinney, the AdExec.

The young artist was instantly energized by this incredible opportunity. His mind was whirling with ideas. For the first time in weeks the awkward distance between the two men seemed to disappear. Brian wisely didn’t bring up the fact that he hoped working together on this project would help him to win back his guy permanently. Instead, the older man just sat back and enjoyed being back in Justin’s presence for a time, reveling in the youngster’s creative intensity.

“Okay, Brian. Of course, I’ll happily work with you on this project,” Justin agreed as soon as Brian came to the end of his long-winded explanation. “But that’s all this is . . . You understand that, right?”

“Uh . . . Whatever, Justin. I . . .” Brian stuttered, trying to buy time to come up with a response that wouldn’t immediately piss his blond boy off again, all the time wondering if Justin had somehow developed mind reading skills.

Justin rolled his eyes and shook his head at Brian’s obvious avoidance of the subject. He knew exactly where Brian Kinney thought he could take this and he didn’t intend to fall for this or any of the man’s other manipulations. But he wouldn’t let his uneasiness at being around Brian keep him away from this unprecedented opportunity either. Justin would deal with Brian later if, or when, the man tried to breach the boundaries of acceptable co-worker behavior.

“Brian . . . just get these fucking handcuffs off so we can start working. The sooner we get this project completed, the sooner you’ll be free to go back to fucking your way through the Big Apple,” Justin couldn’t resist adding in just one more little dig at Brian’s expense - he would help the man on the ad campaign but he wasn’t expected to be a saint, now was he?

Brian ignored the little quip. At this point he was reasonably sure that Justin wouldn’t try to escape once he was released so it was probably safe to take off the cuffs, right? He twisted around in his seat, scanning the area along the far wall where he’d tossed the key earlier, but for some strange reason, he didn’t see it where he thought it'd be.

“I thought I tossed the key over here by the wall,” Brian said, pulling Justin up off the couch and towing him along behind while he searched the far side of the room where he thought the key should still be. “Where the fuck did it go?” Brian complained when it wasn’t immediately located.

“You’re the one who tossed it over here, Brian. Not me! Where the fuck did you throw it?” Justin criticized, not happy at all at being constantly jerked around while Brian wandered around with his eyes glued to the ugly brown carpet.

“Hey, guys,” Daphne interrupted the arguing duo and pointed towards the opposite side of the room where the short hallway down to the bedroom and bath was located.

As one, both Brian and Justin turned to look where Daph was directing their attention. Sitting there in the middle of the passageway, looking as inscrutable and enigmatic as always, was Winston the Cat. Dangling from the corner of his little furry mouth, both men could plainly see a fuzzy black thing that looked decidedly chewed up. There was a glimpse of the metal chain, which would presumably lead to the handcuff key, still visible amid the mangled fuzzy fob bits, but it looked like most of the length of the keychain had already disappeared into the maw of the far-too-curious cat. Even as they watched, the silly feline gagged a bit on the parts of the keychain that they could see - his little mouth working furiously to get the rest of the dangling pieces to follow the rest of the contraption down his gullet.

“Grab that fucking CAT!” Brian screamed and made a futile dive for the wily feline but he was significantly hampered by his chain-gang buddy, Justin, who hadn’t been at all ready for the drastic movement and stumbled then fell, pulling Brian down with him.

In the meantime, Winston capered off to the protection of the bedroom. He was later found under the far recesses of Daphne’s bed. Unfortunately, by that time, the remains of the key fob, and presumably the key to the handcuffs as well, had vanished into the depths of the cat.

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“Brian, if you don’t quit jerking at my arm like that, I won’t be able to finish this drawing,” Justin grumbled after about the tenth time that a restless Brian had pulled a bit too hard on the handcuffs attached to Justin’s left wrist.

“Shit. Didn’t mean to jostle you. Again. I’m just not used to doing shit with my left hand and I keep automatically reaching for stuff with my right hand,” Brian explained as he shuffled through a pile of papers detailing demographics for the Met that he’d brought home from work earlier. “So, it looks like the average age of most visitors to the museum is roughly a thousand years old. There’s a bit of a spike in school age kids who are presumably being dragged there by parents or grandparents or maybe on school field trips. But there’s a huge age gap. If we really want to increase attendance, we have to find a fun way to get young adults to visit . . .” Brian said, thinking aloud while he looked over another stack of research and once again joggled Justin.

In total exasperation, Justin gave up trying to draw and laid his sketchpad on the small coffee table in front of the couch. He and Brian had relocated back to their old apartment to get started on the Met project earlier in the evening - they were under a tight deadline if they wanted to have something to present to Bryce Kennedy by 9:00 am the next morning - while Daphne was delegated to rush Winston off to the vet hospital. The hope was that the vet could get the keys back for them without too much trouble, provided they got the cat there right away. In the meantime, they tried to ignore the inconvenience of working while tethered together.

“Well, like you always say, Brian, the thing that sells best is sex. So we just have to make this campaign sexy enough to catch the eye of the twenty-somethings - fuck knows there’s enough of them in New York City. And they tend to have lots of disposable income. We just have to show that art is sexy . . .” Justin added, trying to get his mind to focus on the task at hand and not the fate of his cat.

‘Yeah, right. How do you make art sexy. Isn’t it all about some old grey-haired types ogling boring landscapes?” Brian teased.

“Um, Brian . . . you have been to the Met, haven’t you?” Justin couldn’t help but take offence to that little comment. “You do know there’s more nudity and sex inside the Met than on most porn websites, right? I mean, they have whole wings of nude statues and paintings. Art is pretty much ALL about sex. I mean, even the fucking landscapes are erotic half the time.”

While he was speaking, Justin opened his laptop and started pulling up pictures from the Met’s archives showing one nude painting or statue after another.

Brian spent a good few minutes admiring the pictures that Justin had pulled up, especially ogling a sepia-colored pencil drawing of one young man with a rather nicely shaped ass. Justin simply sat back and smirked as he noted that Brian was definitely getting turned on by the images. ‘That’ll show him’, he thought. ‘How could anyone think art wasn’t sexy?’

“So what?” Brian went on as soon as he’d had a good eyeful of the hot male asses of the Met. “You’re saying we should advertise the Met like a porn site? ‘Get Off On Art’, or something like that? I’m not sure that the hoity-toity board of directors that runs the place are going to go for that, Justin.”

“Well, that’s the general idea,” Justin shrugged, intrigued by Brian’s idea. “Maybe something a bit less blunt, though. Something a little more urbane, perhaps? Not, ‘Get Off On Art’, but something . . .”

Justin grabbed for his sketchpad once again, his brain suddenly lit up with a flood of ideas. His graphite pencil flew across the page. He was grinning down at his creation the entire time with an almost manic look on his face, his nose wrinkled up with humor and his sweet, full lips screwed up in a mischievous grin that made Brian just want to ravish the sexy blond right then and there.

“How about this . . .” Justin announced as he turned the sketchpad around and showed Brian a drawing of his latest idea.

Justin’s hastily drawn picture showed an abstract nude statue of a woman - obviously something he’d seen before at the Met or some other museum - and in front of it a lecherous-looking old man in a trenchcoat flashing the statue. The caption at the bottom of the drawing read: ‘Expose Yourself To Art!’*****

“Expose yourself to art,” Brian repeated the caption, shaking his head while a slow smile spread across his face at the sheer audacity of the concept. “Justin, that is simply . . .”

“What? Brilliant? Laughable? Stupid? Inane?” Justin wasn’t sure from Brian’s expression exactly what his reaction was.

“It’s fucking genious! I LOVE it!” Brian burst into riotous laughter. “It’s perfect! It’s totally sexy and daring, but just restrained enough that nobody could really take offense since it doesn’t show anything truly offensive.”

“Even better, what if we had the members of the Board of Directors pose for the photos for the campaign,” Justin proposed, gleeful now that he was sure Brian was on board with his crazy idea. “You know, all the little old ladies and gents being just slightly naughty and flashing their favorite art pieces. There’s no way they could object to the campaign when they were the subjects. Plus, it’ll flatter them to no end that you want them to be part of the campaign. And I can just see that little old lady, Ms. Geddes, totally getting off on having her picture on some billboard with her flashing some hot, hunky, naked male statue. She’d be perfect for the copy!” Justin was drawing more ideas in his sketchpad as he spoke, showing all types of folks ‘Exposing’ themselves to various types of art at the Met. He even humorously added one drawing of the old man flashing the ‘Mona Lisa’ even though he knew it would never be shown at the Met. He’d also located a photo of one of the Met’s art pieces depicting a flasher and had drawn a picture of two men flashing the flasher painting. It was brilliant!

Brian was enthralled with the idea. They spent the better part of the next two hours fleshing out the idea. Miraculously, they were so thrilled with their ideas, that they almost forgot that they were still handcuffed together. Once the ideas started to flow, they seemed to work together almost seamlessly. In fact, if it weren’t for Daphne buzzing from the lobby downstairs when she got back from the vet with Winston, they would have gone on all night without noticing their ongoing involuntary bondage.

As soon as Brian opened the door, Daphne lugged the unwieldy cat carrier through the door of the apartment and immediately let out the howling, unhappy pussy. Justin was about to scoop up his pet into his arms, but changed his mind as Winston hissed at him and raised one claw in warning. This cat had NOT had a fun evening and was not about to let his people forget just how angry he really was. Justin wisely backed away from the snarling beast. Winston immediately ran off to hide in the darkest corner he could find, hoping to never be subjected to such indignities again.

“Soooooo,” Daphne flopped herself down on the couch next to Justin and started to explain about her oh-so-wonderful trip to the vet hospital. “The key is definitely in there. The vet took x-rays to be sure. The whole key chain is clearly visible right there in Winston’s belly,” Daphne handed over the paper printouts of the x-ray the vet gave her so the two men could see. “The vet tried to give him this gunk that would make him vomit the key up, but it didn’t seem to work. The vet suggested either surgery or just waiting and watching Winston carefully to see if the key would pass through the normal digestive process. If it doesn’t pass within the next 2-4 days or if he’s showing signs of distress, then the only alternative would be surgery to remove it.”

“Shit! Two to four days? There’s no way we’re waiting two to four days to get out of these cuffs,” Brian insisted vehemently. “Do you think there’s a locksmith on call this late at night that could help us?”

“I doubt it,” Daphne chuckled, still as amused at the predicament the men found themselves in as she had been when it had happened. “Besides, the vet did say it could be sooner - it all depends on how much Winston’s eaten recently and whether or not the key gets stuck somewhere during the process. If he hasn’t eaten much, it could be as little as a couple hours before your key reappears. But since we’re talking a honking huge piece of metal - definitely not something that would normally be part of a cat’s diet - it could take as long as 4 days to eliminate. The vet really didn’t know how long it would be.”

“Fuck! Fuck, fuck, fuck!” Brian exclaimed, not very happy with the uncertainty, especially when he was facing a very pressing deadline and a meeting with the senior partner of his firm about an extremely important client in just over six hours. “What if we had the vet cut it out right now? Could he do that? You said he suggested surgery as one option, right?”

“No fucking way!” Justin objected very loudly. “You’re not having my cat cut open. This whole fucking situation is your fault, Brian. It wasn’t Winston who thought it was a good idea to handcuff us together so you could make me sit and listen to you. And it’s not his fault you threw the key chain across the room like it was one of his normal cat toys. I’m not letting you carve him up like a Thanksgiving turkey just because you were a complete moron! You can just deal with the consequences of your own stupidity, Brian!”

“Need I remind you, Justin, that you’re part of this situation too? If you hadn’t thrown a complete hissy fit and had just listened to one of my messages or read one of my texts, I wouldn’t have had to resort to this extreme measure in order to get you to listen to me. And the longer it takes to get the key back out of your insane cat, the longer we’re subjected to this,” Brian held up their adjoined wrists as evidence.  

Justin looked at Brian with evident disdain. The easy camaraderie they’d been feeling earlier while working on the campaign together was fragile. Brian watched as Justin’s countenance exhibited a panoply of emotions ranging from distrust to hurt to anger. Brian immediately knew that his comment about sending the Fuzzbeast straight to the surgical table had not gone over well. And, as he held up their cuffed wrists, Brian almost immediately rethought his last comment. Was it really such a bad idea to keep Justin chained to him indefinitely? He’d been trying everything he could think of to get his blond roomie back - well, now that he had him and Justin couldn’t easily get away, why NOT keep him that way for a while? If he was smart, Brian could work this little scenario to his advantage, couldn’t he? Time to get just a tad devious, he thought to himself.

“I’m sorry,” Brian said as sincerely as he could, seeing as that expression didn’t pass his lips very often. “I shouldn’t have said that about Winston. You know I wouldn’t have followed through. I’m just frustrated . . . But, it’s no big deal, right? We can just wait it out. I’m sure the key will reappear in a day or so. And, in the meantime, we’ll just have to deal with this,” Brian again held up their tethered wrists.

Justin was momentarily taken aback by Brian’s retreat on the subject. While he would never allow Brian to have his cat cut open just to get the key back, he didn’t for a moment think that Brian would just give up so quickly. He was starting to suspect that Brian had ulterior motives.

“That’s okay, Brian. But we don’t have to wait all that long. We can go ahead and call a locksmith, like you suggested,” Justin offered.

“At this time of night? I can just imagine the exorbitant prices any locksmith would charge for a housecall at this hour. No, I’m not going that route, Justin,” Brian pretended to sound offended at the idea of paying such costs merely to get them out of the cuffs tonight. “You know what? Why don’t I just call Cynthia and have her schedule a teleconference meeting for tomorrow morning instead of us having to be in Kennedy’s office in person? We can scan your drawings so that the boss can see them without us being there in person and we’ll just appear by video. That way we don’t have to worry about the cuffs at all until tomorrow after the meeting. In the meantime, we’ll just watch Winston carefully and hopefully the situation will simply resolve itself soon.”

“But . . . But, Brian, what are we going to do in the meantime . . . I mean for tonight?” Justin was stunned by Brian’s 180 degree turnabout with regard to the issue of the cuffs staying in place.

“Well, we’ll just have to make do, won’t we Justin?” Brian couldn’t help the tiniest hint of a smirk from escaping as he said this. “I mean, it wouldn’t be the first time we shared a bed, would it?”

Justin sat there with his mouth agape, trying to come up with just one good argument to combat Brian’s newfound reasonableness. For some reason he couldn’t come up with anything. How the fuck did he get himself into these situations? It didn’t help matters much that both Daphne and Brian were grinning at him almost maniacally, one on each side of him. Justin felt so trapped. This morning he had resolved not to even talk to Brian ever again. How did it work that he was now chained to his ex-lover, working together on the ad campaign of a lifetime and relegated to sleeping with him tonight? Maybe he’d been too hasty in his decision to keep Winston away from surgery?  

Winston, as if in response to Justin’s thoughts, at that moment let out a kitty-sized mewling groan and farted loudly from the far corner of the living room where he was now huddling as if in pain.

“Fuck!” Justin moaned, resigning himself and his cat into Brian's dubious care for the night.

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*****I give all credit for this ‘Campaign’ to its real creator, Portland photographer Mike Ryerson, who took the original picture of Portland, Oregon’s soon-to-be-Mayor, Bud Clark, in 1978. This picture is a staple of life here in Portland. Clark sold copies of the photo to help pay off his campaign debt after he won the Mayoral election in 1984. He’s still around, if you ever want to visit - most days he can be found in the bar he still owns, the Goose Hollow Inn. I myself met him a few years ago, hung out in the bar with him and listened to his stories. He’s quite a character.