He slips into the building like a thief, taking the steps two at a time and not stopping until he's on the top floor wedged into the little alcove that conceals the heavy metal door leading to the roof.

The duplicate key that Brian never knew about shakes a little as he slides it into the lock and carefully turns it, wincing at the click, amplified by the metal of the door.

                      
He used WD-40 on the hinges last time and the door opens without its usual squeak of protest. He slips through and eases it closed behind him before climbing the dimly lit stairs to the rusty metal door at the top. He'd treated those hinges too and it opens as quietly as its companion.

                      
It is overcast and cool but the relative brightness makes him squint and he stands motionless for a moment, just blinking and seeing nothing. Wiping the moisture away from his eyes with the sleeve of his hoodie, he crosses the roof to the corner he used to think of as his. Perhaps it still is his; no one else seems to know or care that it even exists.

It is undisturbed, confirming his belief that none of the building's tenants ever venture up here. A pity, really, the view isn't much but there is something otherworldly about being outside so high up, shielded from the everyday world by high walls and solitude.

                      
He looks up at the variegated grey and sighs. He hates himself for his weaknesses; there are so many and this is the least of them. Or, perhaps this is one of his strengths?

                      
Dropping his backpack, he leans down and opens it, fishing out the old cloth he brought and using it to wipe off the cushion he keeps here. Satisfied it is clean and dry he places it beside the nearest of the two planters and kneels.

                      
He busies himself with clearing out the weeds, smiling a little at the memory of he and Daphne smuggling the two large boxes up here along with the bags of soil and the flats of little plants. They'd sweated and cursed and laughed the whole time, excited by the secrecy and romance of creating a private garden.

                      
Brian had been away on business so they'd had the whole afternoon to work. As a reward, they'd been treated to a beautiful, sunny day and a spectacular sunset. They'd eaten pizza and chips, and shared secrets together; it was so much like things used to be, before, well, everything, that it had made Justin's heart ache.

                      
He'd watched Daphne drive away and returned to the loft feeling melancholy. He was preparing for bed, delaying the moment when he'd have to climb into the big bed alone. Again. He was hoping that the phone would ring but it never did, and after a while he  gave up and turned out the lights, slipping under the duvet and staring into the darkness until sleep claimed him as it had on all those other lonely nights.

                      
Justin sighs and bows his head over the planter, a weed clasped in his right hand despite the slight twinge of pain; it is easier to ignore than the sharper pain in his heart. The plants had barely had time to take root before everything fell apart. He'd never even told Brian; it would have been too little too late by then and perhaps, selfishly, he wanted to keep this one piece of his love for Brian untainted.

                      
Maybe he is just too stupid and foolish to let go of one last delusion.   He sifts his fingers through the loose soil in the corner of the planter, closing his eyes as he tries just to feel something for one second without the poison of his thoughts intruding. Defeated, he lets the last of the earth fall and looks up into the breeze.

                      
He remembers when he was little, how he'd curl up against his mother on the cushioned swing in the back yard, his eyes closed as she read to him, picturing the brave princes of his favorite fairy tales. When he'd grown too old to be read to, and Molly had replaced him on the swing, he'd slip off to his room and create his own stories, with lavish drawings of his princely heroes and their noble steeds. And then he'd hear voices - of his mother or father or Molly, and the drawings would be quickly hidden. He supposes they are gone now. The last eyes to see them would not have recognized the hopes and dreams he'd poured into the images, they would have seen only ugliness in the proof of his queerness.

                      
It was foolish to believe that he'd poured so much of himself into those drawings that losing them was like losing himself. But... wasn't that what had happened? It wasn't the bat to the head… he could, and did, survive that. It was the smaller, crueler wounds that he couldn't seem to overcome. It didn't matter who'd inflicted them, or that many were self-inflicted, the damage, and the results, were the same.

                      
Yes, the coma, the recovery, the therapy had all affected him. Of course it had. But that wasn't why or when things fell apart. It was after... when his  Mother gave him away to Brian, when he'd been too afraid to let Brian inside of him, when he'd seen *him* at the hospice. Those were wounds that lingered and he, stupid and delusional as he was, hadn't had dealt with them, instead he'd inflicted some of his own.

                      
Eric. The rules. Vermont. Ethan.

When had he started believing Brian's bullshit? Worse, when had he started believing his own?

                      
He looks down at the brown-edged flower in his hand. It is faded and dying. He rips it out of the soil then smoothes the dirt around the remaining plants carefully, ignoring the allergies that make his nose run and eyes water.

                      
He remembers the expression on Eric's face when he'd sent him away so cruelly. He remembers walking back into the diner and working through the rest of his shift, keeping his emotions under tight control. He'd gone to Woody's and Babylon that night and had danced as if he hadn't a care in the world. Brian bought him drinks and they took something that made him feel like he was flying like a gryphon in a world of noble princes. In the morning he stared into the bathroom mirror and wondered if he should introduce himself to the man that stared back at him.

                      
It was that same stranger that looked back at him in the mirror in the hotel room in Vermont.

                      
Ethan was his cry for help, his pathetic attempt to save himself. Or at least to alert his prince to his peril.

But he isn't a princess in a tower. At least not in this tower. Not anymore. And he no longer has the right to call his prince.

                      
Instead he has, what? A garret, a fiddler, and a reflection that mocks him. He is more trapped now than he's ever been. And it is a trap of his own making.

                      
He brushes the dirt from his hands and stands up slowly, his legs protesting from kneeling for so long. Cleaning up, he returns to the planters and looks down at the pathetic remnants. Most of the flowers had died. In their place are weeds. He'd left some so the planters wouldn't be so empty.

                      
One of the dandelions he'd left had turned to seed and he reaches down and picks it carefully. Closing his eyes he makes a wish before holding the puffball up and letting the breeze send the seeds aloft. They rise gracefully, hovering white against the grey sky, before soaring away.

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