Chapter 3 - Welcome to the City!

Justin didn't have time to completely resolve the issue with Winston the cat before he had to scurry off to his first class of the day. Brian quickly hid his overt fear of the furry animal but was still noticeably uneasy. Winston watched the new person with a careful, wary, green eye, following Brian's every move around the small space. It was rather unnerving for the tall brunet who didn't like acknowledging any type of fear. To Justin it was simply hilariously funny.

In the end though, Justin agreed to shut the cat up in the bathroom when he left so that Brian could move his stuff in without kitty supervision. Justin also agreed, magnanimously he thought, to relinquish the larger of the two bedrooms to Brian. He tore through the room like a tornado, pulling out all of his clothing, the bedding and his personal items and tossing them haphazardly into the second bedroom before he grabbed his messenger bag and portfolio case and dashed out of the building to go to class. Brian stood there watching the front door slam shut behind Justin, not really sure how the day, and the situation, had gotten away from him so completely.

Brian shook his head and sighed. He reminded himself it was only till January. It was only till January. It was only till January . . .

And then Brian realized that he desperately needed to piss after all that coffee they'd drank already this morning. Only, that was where the cat had been locked away. And he was alone now in the apartment; Justin wasn't here to run interference with the beast.

Shit! First an annoying blond twink that he can't get rid of. Then the killer kitty of SoHo. This was definitely NOT how Brian Kinney wanted to start his morning!

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Justin didn't make it back to the apartment until after 7:30 that evening. The conscientious art student had three classes on Tuesdays and Thursdays and then he always went directly to work at the art supply store where he was employed in the framing department four days a week. By the time he caught the bus home, stopping only to pick up a six pack of beer, a loaf of bread and a jar of peanut butter - which would have to suffice as both his dinner tonight and his breakfast tomorrow - it was pouring rain and pitch dark outside. When the youth finally struggled into the sixth floor apartment, he looked more like a drowned rat than a human.

At least the sight that greeted him when he opened the door was humorous enough to make Justin forget about all his other troubles for a little while. Brian's large designer suitcase was still sitting in the middle of the living room floor in the same place it had been when Justin had left that morning. On the very top of the case, perched precariously but with apparent ease, was Winston. Brian Kinney, his brand new roommate, was sitting on the couch staring at the cat, his look made up of equal parts confusion, anger and persistence. The cat had that inscrutable look all cats can assume at will - his eyes were slitted almost all the way closed, his ears scanning like radar dishes around the whole room, keeping track of everything, while he pretended not to care a wit what the new human was doing. The mood in the house was tense.

"Hey, Brian," Justin said in a cheery voice, dropping his bags down on nearby tables, chairs, and the floor, wherever they chose to land. "So, did you get all moved in?"

"No. Your monster cat here refuses to get off my luggage," Brian replied with annoyance since it was pretty clear that he wasn't done unpacking and exactly who was responsible.

"I thought Winston was locked in the bathroom?"

"I had to fucking piss. He ran out as soon as I opened the damned door and refused to go back in. He's been sitting there on my bag for fucking hours. When I tried to move him, the fucker growled at me! Since when do cats fucking growl?"

*He he he* Justin merely chuckled at Brian's outrage and went right over to pick up the cat off the suitcase. "Come here, you. Don't terrorize our new roommate, Winston. Seriously, he can't be THAT bad, can he?"

As soon as the beast was contained in Justin's sturdy arms, Brian jumped up and ran for his suitcase, trundling it into his bedroom and slamming the door shut behind him. Justin's giggling followed him down the hallway. Justin let the cat down, shrugged out of his wet jacket and then went into the kitchen to prepare his meager dinner.

Brian emerged from his room about a half hour later. Justin was stretched out across the couch with the stereo on and a heavy looking art history textbook propped against the sofa arm. The remains of his third helping of peanut butter toast was sitting on a paper towel on the coffee table along with one empty and one half-full beer. Winston, who was probably still working away at his own dinner in the kitchen, was nowhere to be seen, which seemed to help restore Brian's usual self-confidence.

"Hey," Brian said tentatively as he settled into the armchair across from Justin. "So . . . Homework, I guess?"

"Yeah, I've got about 200 pages of reading to finish by next week," Justin replied, rolling so he could sit up and look at Brian more directly. "Um, Brian, I'm really sorry about leaving you at Winston's mercy all day. He's actually a wonderful pet. He just gets a little protective of me sometimes."

"Yeah, great. You know, Princess, most people have guard dogs, not guard cats," Brian teased, seeming to finally relax a bit.

"Well, they don't have a Winston," Justin responded, laughing at himself and his over-protective cat. "He'll get used to you after awhile. He didn't ever really like Connor but after the first month or so they reached a detente of sorts and just politely avoided each other. I'm sure you two will work it out."

"Can't you, maybe, keep him in your room or something until then?" Brian suggested.

"Sorry, Winston isn't allowed into my bedroom. I'm allergic to cats. And if he gets on my bed then I'll end up a sneezing mess," Justin explained.

"That makes absolutely no sense. How can a person who is allergic to cats own one?"

"Well, first of all, it's really not that bad," Justin reasoned. "Mostly, my allergy meds take care of things. As long as he stays out of my room so that I have at least one allergen free place, and I remember to wash my hands after petting him, I'm usually fine. And, secondly," Justin continued, "I don't think it's completely true that I own him. It's sort of more the other way around - Winston owns me. He decided I was his person the first week I arrived here in New York. I never had much say in the decision. So it's not like I really have a choice."

"What the fuck are you talking about? Of course you have a choice. If you don't want the cat, you take it to a shelter or give him away or whatever. You're the human, right? You're not trying to tell me the cat has a say in shit," Brian protested.

"Actually, that's exactly what I'm saying," Justin smiled at Brian's look of disbelief. "See, Winston showed up one day at the door of the first apartment I got here in the City. One morning I opened the door to go out and get some coffee and there he was, just sitting there at the door like he'd been waiting for me. He meowed at me and then walked right into the apartment. I threw him out, of course, and tried to get him to leave but he wouldn't. Every damn time I went out the door, he was waiting for me. He got really good at sneaking inside too - he'd run between your legs so fast you barely even noticed him. Once he clawed his way through a window screen so that he could get in. Eventually I gave up and let him adopt me. It was easier than trying to get rid of him."

By the end of Justin's story even the normally taciturn Brian was laughing at the idea of the determined cat adopting a person. It helped to break the ice enough to get the two relative strangers talking. They covered all the basics: what Brian's new job was going to be like, where Justin went to school and where he worked  and where they were both from. It turned out, by some odd coincidence, that they were both originally from Pittsburgh. So, in spite of the rocky start they'd gotten off to that morning, and Winston's attempts to intimidate Brian, the two men managed to find they had quite a bit in common by the time they'd finished talking.

When they'd been talking for about an hour, Justin got up from the couch, displacing a happily purring Winston who'd made himself comfortable on his person's lap at some indeterminate period during the conversation, and offered to get Brian a beer. "I'd offer you more, but I don't get paid until Friday so, unless you want peanut butter toast that's really all there is," Justin explained as he moved off towards the kitchen.

"You can't live on peanut butter toast alone," Brian declared.

"Of course you can," Justin asserted. "Or at least you can for a couple of days. Besides, I just got back from visiting my family in Pittsburgh and I should be able to live off the fat stores I accumulated while I was there for at least a week. I'm surprised I'm not still full after everything my mother force fed me all weekend."

Brian accepted the beer Justin came back with but sat quietly contemplating the label without speaking for a minute or two. "I was going to go out and try this Thai place not too far from here and then hit a couple of clubs afterwards," Brian announced casually. "You're welcome to join me, if you like - my treat - to sort of celebrate our new living arrangements and all."

"No thanks, Brian. I appreciate the offer, but I've got those two hundred pages of reading to get to and a project to get started on for my animation class," Justin answered, hefting up his abandoned textbook as evidence. "Besides, I'm really not all that into the club scene, anyway."

'That's too bad,' Brian caught himself thinking. 'I wouldn't mind dancing with the kid. He's pretty hot and, based on the way he slinks around here, I bet he can move damn good.'

However Brian wasn't about to waste time thinking about Justin when there was a whole Big Apple out there just waiting for Brian Kinney to take a bite out of it. He'd visited the City enough times in the past to already know where to find some of the best clubs. Now that he was officially settled into a real apartment - regardless of the strange circumstances surrounding the whole arrangement - Brian was more than ready to start the official celebration of his move to the City. He was ready to party!

"Well, suit yourself. I'm off then," Brian shrugged as he got to his feet and headed for the door.

"Have a great time, Brian!" Justin waved goodbye and then turned back to his homework.

'At least with all this chaos about my new roomie, the beautiful Brian Kinney,' a stray thought wiffled through Justin's consciousness, 'I haven't had time to think about that asswipe, Connor.'

And Justin refused to think about the loser now either. Instead, he bent his head over the art history book and tried to focus on the glorious works of the Italian Renaissance. As long as he hadn't ended up homeless as a result of Connor James' idiocy, Justin really didn't want to have to think about the man at all.

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"Oh yeah! Oh! Oh! Yeah!"

Justin thought maybe he'd been having the oddest dream of his life when the shouting first got loud enough that he could hear it all the way in his bedroom. But that couldn't be. If he was having an erotic dream of some kind, shouldn't he at least be involved in the fun stuff. Why was he here in bed alone with all that moaning and yelling and begging for 'More' going on without him?

"Fuck me, man! Fuck ME!"

Justin blinked at the digital clock next to his bed and blearily noted it was 2:30 am. He wasn't really functioning enough to figure out what all the noise was about. Instead, he just rolled out of bed and shuffled along, half-asleep, heading towards the source of the noise, scratching lazily at his belly and yawning so hard there were tears forced out of the corners of his eyes.

Once Justin's door was opened, the noise level increased exponentially. The moaning and groaning was much clearer now. There was also a light on in the main room. Sleepy Justin stumbled along unthinkingly towards the light to find out what all the shouting was about.

As soon as he could see around the edge of the wall into the living room, though, Justin was shocked awake enough to freeze in his steps. He blinked a couple times and rubbed at his eyes to make sure he was really seeing what he thought he was seeing. But the disturbing vision didn't go away, so it must be real. Justin simply had never thought he'd happen across such a spectacle, especially not in his own living room.

What Justin saw there were two naked men kneeling on the couch. The one closest to him, a dark-haired, beefy, muscle-bound type with a dark tan, was bent over the back of the couch with his legs spread wide. It was Beefy Boy who'd been making all the noise. Kneeling directly behind Beefy Boy and holding the writhing and moaning man in place with one strong arm while he rammed relentlessly into his ass was Justin's new roommate, Brian Kinney.

With his free hand, Brian was waving around an open bottle of Jim Beam, taking occasional gulps of the dark amber whiskey as he rode his Beefy stud into submission. Obviously, a large portion of the bottle had already been consumed by one or both of the two primary participants, neither of whom seemed able to focus completely on their surroundings. In fact, Justin had probably been standing there staring at the pair for a full five minutes before anyone noticed his presence.

"Hey there, Princess!" Brian said when he finally became cognizant that they weren't alone anymore. "We're jus having a little party to celebray' my glorious arrival in the City that Never Sleeeps. Wanna join us?" Brian held up the sloshing bottle in invitation but didn't seem at all deterred when Justin mutely shook his head. "No? Suit yoursel', Princess. Mor' fer me! *Hehehe* I was gonna take a bite outta the stupid Big Apple, ya know, like in the songs and shit, but then I decided I'd just eat this guy's nice big beefy bubble butt instead! Don't ya think that's bettern' some stupid apple? I'd rather eat ass than rotten apples any fuckin' day!"

And with that comment still hanging in the air around them, Brian took a tighter hold onto the shoulder of the Beefy Boy in front of him, and slammed into the man's body with even more gusto than before. It only took three more well-aimed thrusts before the Big Guy screamed out his final 'YES!' and started shooting out long streamers of thick cum that splattered all over the back of the couch as well as the floor and even a drop or two on Justin himself. Realizing that he'd reached his goal, Brian relaxed his shoulders and held himself and the Beefy Bottom still for about fifteen seconds until he grunted out his own release and sagged onto the body in front of him.

Justin was still standing there in utter disbelief when Brian had recovered enough to pull out of Beefy Bottom Boy and struggle to his feet. "Tha's nice," Brian commented and patted the stranger on the head once, almost affectionately, before he pushed the guy roughly off the couch and started to walk away. "Now, get the fuck out!" Brian ordered over his shoulder, still holding onto the whiskey bottle with one hand. "I gotta piss! Will you sho' our guest out, Princess?"

It took Justin and Beefy Boy a couple minutes to find all of the inebriated man's clothes. Then Justin called a cab for the guy and shoved him out the apartment door. Justin could hear the water running in the shower when he finally made his way to the bathroom. He hammered on the door a couple times but got no response from Brian. Finally, the weary young man decided to give up and head back to bed.

Justin figured that Brian would probably be all right since he'd presumably made it to the shower. And, if not, well . . . At least he wouldn't have to worry about a noisy roommate anymore.