Begin Again

Chapter One

Author's Notes: This story is dedicated to Elaine, the lovely Maxiekat, and is a response to her challenge to tell a story set about ten years post 513, where Brian and Justin meet again for the first time since Justin left, and are both in significant relationships. Will they stay with their partners or will "the love that was always there" prevail? My thanks to Thyme for beta'ing.

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“And you are going to participate, no excuses this time!” Debbie pointed her ladle at Brian, who was lounging against the refrigerator, watching her make the final preparations for her Sunday dinner. That he also stepped in whenever something heavy needed lifting or an item from a high shelf needed retrieving went without mention though not unnoticed. Debbie learned long ago that Brian preferred his good deeds to go unsung and since she hated admitting that she needed the help at all, they made a perfect match.

“I don’t do excuses,” Brian drawled as he stepped forward to carry the heavy pan of gravy from the stove and pour it into the serving bowl. “And I also don’t do reunions.  I’ll be happy to send a generous donation to the Vic Grassi house in honor of its tenth anniversary, and I’ll be sure to get Michael and Ben something suitably boring for their anniversary but....” Brian’s attention was focused on pouring the gravy into the large bowl so he didn’t see the gleam in Debbie’s eyes as she interrupted him.

“Justin’s coming.”

The red tomato sauce splashed all over the counter as Brian’s hand slipped.  Debbie bustled forward with a dishtowel to start mopping up. Her tone was apologetic but she didn’t fool him for a second. She’d gotten just the reaction she’d been aiming for, he thought, putting the heavy saucepan down and turning to stare at her as she wiped up the mess.

“Look at what I made you do. Did you get any on your shirt?  I should have some club soda in the fridge, that will take it out in a ....”

“Stop.”

It was the tone of voice more than the word that made Debbie hold still.  She looked searchingly at Brian’s face.  “I thought so. You still love him, don’t you? Nine years without a visit and he’s still got hold of a big part of that heart of yours, which you pretend doesn’t exist, but you and I know differently.”

Brian shook his head fondly, his composure fully recovered. “Deb, you’ll never give up on that, will you?  Did you happen to forget Mac?”

“It would be easy enough to do,” she muttered, handing Brian the lasagna pan to carry out to the table.

“Deb!” Brian was surprised. “I thought you liked Mac. Where did that come from?”

Debbie brushed at her face impatiently, smearing her rouge as she wiped away the tears. “Oh, I do like him.  He’s perfectly likeable. But he’s not the man for you; he’s too, too....”

“Nice?” Brian suggested, his tongue planted firmly in his cheek.  Debbie looked back at him challengingly.

“Well, since you said it first – yes. He’s too nice. He’s ordinary and not at all the type of man I’d have expected you to settle down with. It’s all well and good to say you’re over Sunshine, but don’t settle, for fuck’s sake.”

“I’d never settle for just the sake of a fuck, Debbie, you should know that by now.”

“Hrumph,” was all she said as she nudged him toward the swinging door that led to the dining room. “Let’s get this food on the table before it’s cold –but don’t think I’m done with you – I’m not.”

Shaking his head, Brian followed her into the dining room. As the gang gathered around the worn old table, he was lost in thought. Ten years had gone by quickly. Hard to believe Mikey and his professor had been a married couple for a full decade, Brian thought, as he watched them take their seats at the table. Ben was thinner, his hair already turning gray, but he continued to hold the worst ravages of his disease at bay. Mikey, on the other hand, was a bit heavier and he wore his thinning hair long, in a ponytail reminiscent of Buzzy’s, the former owner of Mikey’s comic store. Ted was there, still with Blake, still as boring as ever. Yet, Ted, for all that he lacked excitement, was also still someone whom Brian relied upon and trusted as he did few others.

And of course, Emmett. Unpaired at the moment, he never gave up on his search for love, that perfect “soulmate” who would make his life complete.  At the moment he was telling the group of his latest escapade in the carousel of love and his grab for the gold ring.  Brian pulled out a chair next to a quiet man with light brown hair, which Brian fondly noted needed combing – it was sticking up as though he’d been running distracted hands through it while reading – likely – or had just gotten out of bed – a more pleasing thought though less likely. Tortoise shell frames gave Mac Williams a rather studious appearance but also helped him look at least twenty-three. In actuality, he was twelve years older than that, but blessed, or cursed, with boyish looks that still got him carded on occasion.

Brian pulled away the book that Mac held beneath the tablecloth as he leaned over and kissed his lover.  “No reading at the table, Mac. You want Deb to smack you with her spoon again?”

Mac looked up apologetically. “Sorry, I was just....”

“Reading something and couldn’t put it down!” a chorus of voices finished for him good-naturedly.

Mac grinned sheepishly. “Caught in the act too many times, huh? Sorry, Em, Debbie. No need to bring out the heavy cutlery! I’ll be good.” 

“What are you reading, Mac?” Ben asked, passing the lasagna to his colleague and fellow Carnegie Mellon professor.

“A new study on the effect of mercury on the migratory habits of birds common to the Great Lakes – fascinating work.”  Brian loved watching Mac’s green eyes light up when he was talking about his beloved birds, but what was almost as much fun was watching everyone else’s eyes glaze over within a few moments. Mikey, who was known to prose on for hours about comic book heroes, couldn’t understand how anyone could find birds interesting. Brian knew, however, that his best friend’s frequently voiced complaint about Mac’s obsession was really Mikey’s way of asking, how could Brian be interested in such a man? Which was ironic, since it was Ben and Mikey who introduced the two men.

It had been four years ago. Brian was thirty-nine, bored and finding less and less satisfaction in his old lifestyle.  At Ben’s suggestion, he’d started taking classes at the university just as a way to alleviate some of his ennui and found that he enjoyed his time back in the classroom.  Just for the hell of it, he took a class in Natural History. To his surprise, he found himself sitting in an overcrowded classroom, jammed primarily with giggling coeds, although his sharp eye noted that what males were there were pinging positive on his gaydar. 

The reason was obvious as soon as Professor Mac Williams entered the lecture hall. Just under six feet tall, with a slim, athletic body that was partially concealed in the loose khakis and bulky cable knit sweaters he favored, Dr. Williams had an engaging charm and genuine enthusiasm for his subject, which, coupled with a wry sense of humor and keen intelligence, made him one of the most popular professors on campus. Brian decided before the first class was over that he’d get the professor into his bed.

Which he did. What he didn’t anticipate was that it would take all of that year to get into the man’s pants, and that during the course of a very slow courtship, he came to genuinely like him.  As the Sunday dinner conversation flowed over him, Brian thought back to the first time he made love with Mac. 

“So...class is over for the semester.” Brian sat on the corner of the long table that served as a desk for the first row of students in the big room. Mac stood by his podium, packing away exam books. He looked up and smiled, his quick, bright smile.

“Well, that is true. Two semesters of natural history, I’m proud of you. You’d better watch it or we may make a scientist out of you yet.”

“The class trip canoeing along the River Styx was quite enough for me, Prof. Mac, I’m ready to return to a field I know better.”

“And what might that be?”

Brian had been waiting for an opening like that. He moved forward decisively, and, putting one hand behind the other man’s head and using his other hand to hold him close at the waist, he kissed him. Brian wasn’t sure what he’d expected from the quiet professor when he finally kissed him, but the soft moan and then a hard body pressing close against him was a surprise. Arms wrapped around his neck and he’d felt a hard length pressing against his leg. After several long minutes of just kissing, which was an understatement if ever there was one, Brian recalled, thinking of the hot arousal that had sparked through him as he held Mac, he’d finally broken the connection long enough to suggest they move to a more private place.

The dazed, wide-eyed look of Mac’s deep green eyes behind his glasses had touched something in Brian that had been, if not dead, buried deep for several years.  The professor looked around the empty classroom and lowered his head to Brian’s chest.

“Oh my God,” he’d said, laughter filling his voice, “I resisted you for nine months and now on the last day I ruin it by practically rutting against you in my lecture hall. Can you imagine if a student had come in? Or worse, my dean?”

“Mac...you’re stilling rutting against me,” Brian had teased, brushing the light brown hair back that was perpetually falling in his eyes.

“So I am,” Mac had agreed. And charmed Brian completely by kissing him again.

Eventually they made it as far as Mac’s small apartment on campus. Brian took a great deal of pleasure in removing the baggy clothes and finding that the body underneath was exquisite, leanly muscled and tanned from a life outdoors.  Once in bed, Mac made it clear he was no boy, however, despite his deceptive looks, and he explored Brian’s body with the same intense passion and focus he brought to everything. Used to taking the lead, Brian laid back as Mac used his tongue and hands to explore every inch of him. But then, when Brian thought there might be a question over who was topping, Mac had rolled off him and stretched out invitingly, his cock hard and dripping pre-cum. Still, his smile was shy as he said, “I think this is where I say take me, I’m yours. There’s lube and condoms in the nightstand drawer.”

Brian had almost forgotten what it was like to fuck a man whose eyes you wanted to look into as you moved inside his body, to want to clasp hands to forge a connection almost more intimate than that joining the rest of your bodies. He’d actually thought he’d reached an age when he couldn’t be thrilled in bed anymore – and he’d been wrong. They made love three times that first time, and Brian didn’t need to think twice about taking his turn bottoming, though it had been even longer since that had happened. But with Mac, it just happened naturally. He was so unpretentious and accepting that for the first time in his life, Brian felt like he could let down his mask. 

They’d drifted into living together, almost by default, never talking about it, just spending more and more time together until the time came that Mac’s lease was up for renewal and Brian suggested he move into the loft and put the saved money toward a better car for commuting the extra distance. Mac started coming to the family dinners, but other than Ben and Michael, it took the rest of the group a while to realize exactly who Mac “belonged” to, since he looked closer to Hunter’s age and he often spent a good bit of time talking about college issues with Ben or the best places to fish with Carl.

Still, everyone liked Mac.  As Debbie said, he was so nice.

Why was that a problem, Brian wondered. And why did he feel that his new-found happiness was threatened by this reunion?

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Justin heard the door slam and footsteps running up the iron stairs that connected the two levels of their loft.

“Hey, Picasso!  Can you take a break to greet the newly appointed Chief of Surgery of Metropolitan Hospital or would that interfere with genius as we know it?”

By the time Justin absorbed the content of the shouted words and tossed down his brush and turned around, Kyle was standing in the door of Justin’s studio, grinning from ear to ear.

“No way!” 

“Way,” Kyle affirmed happily, opening his arms wide. Justin ran over and was enveloped in a hug that lifted him off his feet and spun him around.

“No more graphic arts jobs for you, love of my life, my sole reason for living! We can now afford for you to spend all day – but not the nights, nights are for us – but the days you can create masterpieces!”

Justin laughed as he always did when Kyle got into one of his exuberant moods.  “So you really got it? No kidding?”

Kyle pulled himself up to his full height of five foot nine and looked down his perfectly sculpted nose at Justin – and it was perfectly sculpted, he once told him, because he underwent three surgeries until the plastic surgeon gave him what he wanted, Kyle being a perfectionist – and answered him in his best imitation of Jennifer Taylor.

“Dear, haven’t I spoken to you about doubting me?” They both laughed and then Kyle pulled Justin close for a kiss. “Mm, the fragrance of turpentine, I swear it gets me hard. But can you take a break now and possibly spare your partner a little time for celebrating?”

Justin reached out to undo the other man’s tie.  “Tell you what? You help scrub the turpentine smell from me in the shower and I’ll spare you all the time you want.”

Kyle’s deep blue eyes flashed with his arousal and he kissed Justin again. “Didn’t tell you one of the best parts,” he murmured as their hands began to undo buttons and snaps, while they continued kissing and caressing each other with increasing fervor.

“What’s the best part? Has to be you making me a kept man...does it get better than that?” Justin laughed as he felt his cargo pants being pushed down.

“How about a whole month off before I assume my new duties – just in time for me to go with you for that reunion, anniversary celebration, bike ride for charity thing in Pittsburgh?” Kyle slid his hands down Justin’s ribcage as his lips kissed a path down to his navel.

Justin ran his fingers through the thick dark hair as that adorable mouth got closer to his cock. “You’ll come with me?”

“If you want me to,” Kyle tossed out casually before closing his mouth around his goal.

Justin’s mind raced with thoughts even as his body reacted to Kyle’s efforts. Pittsburgh. Home again after how long?  Hard to believe it’d been nine years since he’d left to find his future.  When his mother and sister moved to New York two years after he did, he had even less reason to go back – and nowhere uncomplicated to stay. He lived with Daphne’s cousin for a year, and for two years after that shared a tiny apartment with a studio with three other artists, waitering to make ends meet. A reference from Brian got him work in the art department at one of the advertising agencies in the city and he finally began to make enough to go out and have a social life again. Which he did, to the fullest, New York City being full of handsome gay men. 

After a while, that lifestyle began to pale and when Justin found himself heading toward twenty-nine, never fucking the same man twice, never bothering to learn their names, and bored to death with the whole scene of easy sex, easy drugs, and easy goodbyes, he left the heavy partying behind and threw himself back into his art.

He met Kyle Shapiro by chance. He’d been working with a new paint and also taking a new allergy medicine, when he suddenly developed severe spasms in his neck and arm, which twisted him like Quasimodo. He could barely talk but managed to get his roommate’s attention. He took one look at him and called 911. Once at Metro Hospital, the ER attending doctors and residents were totally clueless as to what to do for him as he continued to spasm, and panic, while his roommate tried explaining his complicated medical history.

Kyle happened to walk past Justin’s curtained cubicle, where a cluster of medical personnel were debating neurological tests and various other measures to take while Justin suffered agonies from the spasms, as well as from the fear that this was some long delayed consequence of the bashing. Kyle took one peek and told the dithering brain trust who were debating a spinal tap, “For fuck’s sake, the poor guy’s having a dystonic reaction –hurry up and give him an IV anticholinergic.”

Within ten minutes, Justin was fine. Thirty minutes after that, he was having coffee with the good looking surgeon who saved him from a night of pain and worry, not to mention more invasive tests.  Two hours later, the blue-eyed, black-haired, half Irish, half Jewish doctor was massaging all of the remaining kinks out of Justin’s sore muscles with an expert touch. A half hour after that, he was lifting Justin’s legs to his shoulders and entering him. 

“Do you always move so fast?” Justin had asked him later, when they were both basking in the after-glow. Kyle had chuckled softly but took a moment to answer, his arms tightening around Justin, who was resting his head on his shoulder.

“No...I don’t ‘always’ move fast. My sisters would tell you that I am one of the slowest, most deliberate men in creation. But, when I know something is right, I feel it, deep down, and I act on it. Like with your diagnosis earlier. I’m sure some of the doctors would say there are a dozen other things that could have been wrong with you, and I didn’t even know you’d taken a new medicine which is known to cause dystonic reactions, but I saw you and two things were as clear to me as the commandments to Moses on Mt. Sinai – what you needed to get better and that I needed you in my life.”  Those dark blue eyes looked deeply into Justin’s as Kyle continued, his tone serious, “And that, Mr. Taylor, is not something I’ve ever said to anyone else.”

Justin soon learned that Kyle meant what he said. For all that he was drop dead gorgeous, he had not spent his twenties enjoying all that New York City had to offer the handsome young gay male. He had not been monastic by any means, but his career had been the primary focus of his life.  Until he met Justin and fell hard for the blond artist with the bright smile who made him see that life could be fun.

For Justin, falling for Kyle wasn’t as easy.  He told himself that he didn’t need love when the sex was so good, that love was over-rated, that he was the very model of a model homosexual, and as such, was above such trite sentimentality as love and monogamy. So, he continued to trick for awhile, despite the fact that no trick that he found was as handsome, or smart, or just plain fun to be with as Kyle. He knew he was hurting Kyle’s feelings when he refused to commit, when he refused to move in together, when he refused to say he loved him too – even though they both knew he did – but something compelled him to continue on that path.

Until the day that there was a shoot-out at Metro Hospital.

Justin had been working intently for several days on a large commissioned piece and had just finished it when he lifted tired eyes to the large flat screen television mounted on the wall of his studio. A news bulletin had broken in on the afternoon programming to give the news that an armed gunman was holding hostages at Metro Hospital after having shot three people, one of them a police officer.

Justin had been anxious when he heard that news since he’d formed several friendships with Kyle’s colleagues; he out and out panicked when an update revealed that the gunman was holding a surgeon and two nurses hostage, his motive unclear. Justin suddenly knew, with that bone deep certainty that Kyle had described having, both that Kyle was the doctor being held – and that he loved him more than life itself. Justin could only hope he’d have the chance to tell his man how he felt.

Later, Kyle was to laugh and say the small bullet wound he sustained was a small price to pay for waking Justin up to just how special he really was. And indeed, the press and police all lauded Kyle as the hero of the hour, for distracting the gunman by talking to him non-stop for hours and then attempting to overpower him, giving the nurses the chance to get away and the SWAT team the chance to move in.  While the gunman did get one shot off before Kyle wrested the gun from him, it was a highly successful effort. Kyle later claimed his only regret was that he couldn’t perform his own plastic surgery to repair the bullet wound.

Justin managed to fight his way past the police barricades and clasped the weakened but grinning doctor to his chest fiercely.

“Don’t you ever do anything like that again!” he ordered him.

“Or...?” Kyle asked.

“Or I won’t move in with you or tell you how much I love you,” Justin threatened, fully intending to be moved in by that night if at all possible.

“Oh, well in that case, that was my last heroic rescue,” Kyle promised, putting his head down on his blond’s shoulder and promptly passing out.

Thinking back to that horrible day, five years earlier,  Justin had to wonder why he ever fought so hard to stay independent. In all honesty, he was happier as half of a couple, secure in knowing that he was loved and that he could shower love on the man he was with, and not have to hide his feelings.  He was secure, he knew he was. So why did he feel so...so nervous about going home to Pittsburgh for this long overdue visit?  A reunion would be the perfect time to introduce the man in his life to all the people who were important in his life. Because, in all honesty, as much as he loved his mother, it was Debbie who mothered him during the toughest years of his life, and, well, it was Brian who saw him safely to manhood.

Yes, Justin told himself firmly, he wanted to introduce Kyle to the people who helped make him who he was – and he wanted everyone back home to meet the man that he loved.  So why did he feel so threatened?

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