Whatever It Takes

Loving someone is painful.
It took Brian about 22 minutes after Justin had left to figure that one out.

Loving someone is lonely.
That took about a week.

He came home to an empty loft in the evenings and hated it. Somehow their previous separations had not prepared him for that. This was different because this time, he had given it his all. He couldn’t have done anything more, couldn’t have made himself more vulnerable, could not have loved him more, and still he was alone, without him.

The e-mails were a joke. They were words without a voice, lists, resumes. They were meaningless information. The phone calls were torture. For a moment, he was there and Brian felt whole, but then he was gone, and the pain and loneliness would sweep him away again.

Letting him go had been a mistake of unfathomable proportion. He could not bear it.

Something had to give.
That realization took 63 days.

Justin had to come back, or Brian had to stop loving him.

The status quo was unsustainable.

He reread all of Justin’s e-mails. And the next time they talked, he listened. Not to the words, but to Justin, to the man he loved.

Justin missed him, but he was making friends. He was anxious, but he was excited. He was tired but he was happy. Justin was where he ought to be. He was not coming back, not anytime soon, not if left to choose for himself.

So, if Brian wanted to retain his dignity, remain sane, and regain his independence, if he wanted to reclaim the Brian Kinney he once was, he had to stop loving Justin Taylor.

People stopped loving people everyday. And considering how painful and lonely loving was, it would not be hard to let it go.

If Brian were distracted enough, love would just slip away.

Brian’s life did not lack in distractions. He buried his days in work, brilliant, focused, bold, to the thrill of Cynthia and Ted. It took the two of them team tagging to keep up with him, and once his mind and determination was on Kinnetics, he was unstoppable and the firm grew from strength to strength.

After his day of work as an ad executive was done, came a day of work as a club owner, rebuilding a bombed out location. He was a contractor, an architect, a designer. Babylon would not be just a club. It would be the club.

No aspect of the project escaped his personal attention, from the sound system (the best), the Alcohol list (the most extensive), to the new back room (with hidden alcoves, clever condom and lube dispensers, disposal units and shelves with soft, snowy white terrycloth come towels, cleaned by a diaper service.)

The rest of the time, Brian focused on his version of self-improvement. He went to the gym daily, made use of the steam room, got massages and facials, and fucked hard and often. That meant regular blowjobs in the steam room, and fucking one, or more often two guys a night. Soon people started to remark on how well rested and healthy he looked, and his body was back down to three percent body fat.

He had never been good at answering Justin’s e-mail, and stopped bothering altogether. He was so busy, he missed a lot of Justin's phone calls and had to keep those he did not miss short. When Justin, worried, came for impromptu visits, he fitted him into his busy schedule by replacing fucking random tricks with fucking him. It was glorious and fun, but he resented the emotional down left after his departure, and it wasn’t hard from there to convince himself that he was happier not seeing him at all.

Justin’s life was hectic too. He was building a career, taking classes, working, commuting, making friends and adjusting to New York City. The distractions were many and not negligible. The money was tight. Trips to Pittsburgh were disruptive and left him feeling hollowed out. Brian was so busy. They fucked a lot but he resented the emotional down left after his return, especially when Brian was so difficult to reach, and it wasn’t hard from there to convince himself that he was happier not seeing him at all. Brian loved him. It was only time. Next time he went back it would be for a good long while, he promised himself, not a short week, and then they could reconnect, and things would be back to normal. He concentrated on his career to get to the point when he could take off for several weeks.

145 days after Justin left, Babylon reopened. It was the most successful club opening in the history of Pittsburgh, maybe in the entire history of clubs. Babylon was the quintessential gay experience, and became a destination, Brian contracting with downtown hotels, spas, and gyms to organize Weekend packages. Queers from the entire United States came and spent time in Pittsburgh, for ‘Babylon Weekends’. Now, at any points, there were new faces, new bodies around, and Brian would never have to tire of his new playground.

He looked fabulous, felt fabulous. Brian Kinney was back.


Brandon watched him rise out of the ashes of Babylon like a phoenix. He enjoyed the new Babylon, and took advantage of its never-ending new opportunities, but he realized that Brian Kinney’s star was not as much on the wane as he had once believed.

Being sent home unmolested, after having offered his ass, had been eighty percent relief, twenty percent humiliation. Now it stated to feel like one hundred percent missed opportunity. Like so many others, he now wanted to be fucked by Kinney. He wanted a piece of him. And God, he wanted to fuck him.

His chance came in the form of the Mardi Gras extravaganza, when Babylon held it’s first annual Masked Decadence. Tickets cost $120.00 bucks, a third of the benefits going to the Vic Grazzi House. The guests went all out. You do not spend $120.00 bucks to go to the event in the gay season wearing a big-Q costume.

Brandon spend $2000.00 dollars on Toreador attire that made the best of his many assets and was gratified that his efforts were not in vain. Many looked good, a few looked great. He looked awesome. Brian Kinney wore what he wore every night to the club: Black jeans, a sleeveless black shirt, and, as a salute to the evening, a fitted black mask.

Kinney got his cock sucked twice, in the middle of the dance floor, as was his privilege, and fucked a gorgeous black boy dressed as a pharaoh in the back room. But he circled Brandon all night, zeroing in on him in the end and taking him back to his loft.

Rimmed, sucked and fucked well beyond his wildest expectation, Brandon woke up in Kinney’s bed with his custom fitted mask as the last remnant of his $2120.00 investment, in his opinion, the best money he’d ever spent.

Ten minutes later, Kinney’s cock was up his ass again, and fuck, was he a brutal top. A while later, lying in his own come in the afterglow of another mind blowing orgasm, Brandon got an invitation he could not refuse.

“If you’re up for one more, take this shit off,” said Brian, talking about his mask. “I’ll be in the shower.”

Seeing whom he had been fucking, Brian laughed, slammed him face first against the glass, and did it once more.

“How long have you wanted to make good on our bet, Brandon?” he asked, pumping deep in the now well-fucked ass.

“Almost as long as I’ve wanted to fuck you,” Brandon answered.

“In your dreams,” said Kinney, coming for the seventh time since he entered the club the night before.

For men like Brandon, there were such few real challenges…


Brian had only played the game of dominance a few times. His partners usually quickly yielded. He was trying hard to forget the last man who had not. 298 days after that man had left, he was almost there. The next time he brought Brandon back to the loft, it was early, by their standard. Hardly past eleven.

They were very physically evenly matched. They wrestled hard, ripping off each other’s clothes, rolling on the floor, restraining each other. There were no hits. They were both much too pretty for that. When Brian finally got the upper hand and slipped his dick up Brandon’s ass, his knee on one of Brandon’s wrists, and holding his other arm pinned to his back, Brandon gave in. Brian had not been this aroused in months, and almost passed out as he came.

Four more times in the next few months they repeated this scenario and he prevailed. Then, one night, fighting until the last second, he got to feel the nine inches of Brandon’s cock slowly claiming his hole. They both came in seconds.

After that, the battles were less hard fought. Neither of them ever gave in easily, but sometimes Brandon could be convinced by a good spanking or Brian rimmed him into submission. They only fucked every few weeks, but it was always hotter than hell.

By then, Justin had accepted a six month scholarship to Italy, and Brian could go for days without thinking about him.

Brandon and Brian took the competition to Babylon, vying for the same tricks. Whoever got the trick got to top later. Sometimes, poor unsuspecting tricks ended up at the loft with the both of them, a cat toy for the two tops. It was always a night the boy would remember.

Once in a while, they brought back a third top, to spice things up, and occasionally one of them lost, and got to take two cocks up the ass in one night. Outside of fucking, they had nothing in common, and never talked. Brian did not know what Brandon did for a living.

After two years, the frequency of their meetings diminished, and eventually trickled down to nothing. The game had run its course, and was over. Brandon had been gone for two months (having moved to Philly) when Brian actually noticed he was not around anymore and he did not care.
By then, his life was back on track. He worked hard, fucked hard, though with less frequency, spent time with his friends whose addresses he had rediscovered, and dedicated several evenings a month to his growing son.

Ted had moved to Atlanta, Georgia, with Blake, to run the Kinnetic subsidiary there, and Cynthia did the same in Portland, Oregon. Brian travelled a lot, and Kinnetic was the standard to follow. He had major clients in all the big cities, especially in Boston.

On a beautiful afternoon in May of 2010, after three days of meetings in bean town, he took a weekend to see the old shaker settlements in Massachusetts. He had always admired their furniture and architecture. He was driving through the countryside out of Lincoln when his left rear tire blew and he landed his rented Porsche in a copse of trees at the side of the road.

He was completely uninjured, and walked to a close-by farmhouse, which had no business existing so close to Boston.

It was a CSA that rented land from the city of Lincoln, land that had been willed to the commonwealth with the express requirement that it never be built on. The farmer, Ari, his wife Moira and their son Eli were interesting and friendly, but it was a harvest and market day and they couldn’t help much more than by calling the nearby garage.

The setting was idyllic, and Brian hung around for a few hours, watching the running of the farm. Eli took him to a nearby field where their neighbor let the boy keep his small horse with his own two geldings, sharing stalls in a small barn. The neighbor was mucking out dirty straw, and pushed back his hat to greet them. It was Justin Taylor.

“Eli! Time to go!” Moira had stopped on the dirt path, at the wheel of an old truck loaded with organic produce to go to market. “Hey, Justin, how are things?”

“Hi, Moira.”

“Sorry,” said Eli to Brian. “I’ve gotta go help my mom. See you!”

Justin and Brian just stared at each other in silence, and then Justin turned away and walked toward his house. Brian followed. Justin took off his Gumboots, went in what evidently once had been a very large barn but was now his home, where a studio, a kitchen, a living room and a bedroom shared the enormous sunlit space.

There were paintings on the walls, and Persian rugs on the hardwood floor. In the kitchen, Justin switched on a kettle and washed his hands and face, rinsing under the tap, getting his hair all wet.

Brian was standing in the middle of the room, taking it all in. He’d known Justin had become a successful artist, his canvasses selling for tens of thousands, but had not wanted to acquaint himself with his work. If the huge paintings on the wall were anything to go by, he loved it.

Justin walked by, picking up a sweater and some books off the floor, setting them on a low table. He looked at Brian for a moment, a thoughtful expression on his face, then shrugged. He took off his shirt, socks, jeans and underwear. Standing fully naked, his body as lithe and his skin as luminous as Brian remembered, his arms held slightly out, he asked:

“So, are you coming or going? Or coming, and then going? Or coming… and staying?”

Brian took in the questioning blue eyes, the pulpous lips, the rising cock and walked forward, pushing him backward toward the bed, a hand in the middle of his chest. He toed off his shoes, removed his sleeveless t-shirt and took down his Jeans, stepping out of them and out of his socks at the same time.

They stood naked, inches from each other, for as long as they could stand it. Brian could smell the scent of Justin’s clean sweat, of his arousal. He could have picked those out easily in a crowd of thousands. Then they were kissing, Justin’s mouth surrendering to his plunder, and Brian remembered he hadn’t kissed anyone in five years.

“This feels so good,” whispered Justin against his lips. “I haven’t kissed anyone in five years.”

It was getting dark outside when Brian, caressing Justin's face, pushing his soft sweaty blond hair off his forehead asked Justin:

“Are you ever going to leave me again?”

Justin, eyes glowing, gave him his sunshine smile. “Never.”

“All right, then,” said Brian, satisfied. No more pain, no more loneliness. He smiled at Justin, admitting to himself again and telling to Justin the truth that had almost killed him: “I love you.”

 

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