Homecoming

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Brian

I swear that he buys half the fucking supermarket. It's a good thing we didn't bring any luggage to speak of with us, because the car is piled to the roof with groceries by the time I finally get him out of there. I'm trying to be pissed about that, but something inside me is …

It feels like he's nesting. It feels like he's come home to roost.  It feels like he's planning to stay awhile. More than a while.  And I can't help but feel good about that.

We're going to have to talk about his work soon. About how much he needs to get done for his show - fuck! his show. At that thought, all my pride in him surfaces, and I find myself grinning like a complete idiot. I sneak my hand across and pinch his thigh, just because I can. He yelps and bats my hand away, and suddenly we're both laughing again. We seem to have done a lot of that this morning. More than I've done for months. Maybe it's the same for him.

As we pull up at the house, I wonder if he's going to give me grief over what I've done here. Not that I've done much, exactly. But …

The house came with a whole batch of furniture - some of which I liked, some not so much, but I kept it all and even added some stuff just so that it could be rented out as "furnished" if necessary. And that's all that's in most of the rooms. I can feel my throat getting tight, and I'm already trying to work out what bullshit excuses I can come up with to explain away … And then we're here, and it's too late to invent anything. I'll just have to wing it. Maybe he won't even notice, won't figure it out.

I pull around back, and zap the garage door open. The `vette slides in as if it knows it's home. While Justin starts getting all the bags out of the back, I open the door through to the house. There's a short passage that passes the laundry and goes through to the kitchen. I make sure the kitchen door is propped open and go back to help with the hundreds of bags of fucking groceries.

But while I'm doing all this, my eyes are always on Justin, and, as soon as he puts down the first lot of bags and looks around, I know that he's onto me.

He stands staring about him for a moment, then he gives me one quick look. I look away and try to pretend that there's nothing going on, nothing about the kitchen that could possibly indicate how much time I've been spending here. Nothing that could give away …

He takes a breath, and I brace myself. But then he just goes and fetches in some more bags.

Once they're all in, scattered across the floor and the bench tops, he closes the kitchen door.

He walks over and looks at the coffee machine, and then at the Phillipe Starke juicer. He opens the cutlery drawer and peers in, then checks out one or two of the cupboards. He still doesn't say anything, just gives me another look.

Then he starts unpacking the bags.

The big double door refrigerator is on, and when he opens the freezer, he finds a couple of Deb's fucking meals inside. He still doesn't say anything, and I don't know what's going through his head, but he's got this tiny smile on his face, so I'm not too worried. He hands me some milk and juice and I put them away meekly.

Now that I've been sprung, and the worst is over, I want to take him off to see the other parts of the house. I haven't furnished it all yet - most of the furniture is still the "rented property" stuff. But there are a couple of rooms that … well, that aren't.

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Justin

I don't know exactly what's going on here, but I'm not stupid, and I do know that Brian has been up here, at the house, since it was last rented out. The coffee machine is the top of the range type that he has at the loft, so is the juicer. Ditto with the cutlery and crockery. And there are Deb-type meals in the freezer for fuck's sake! How dumb would I have to be not to realize that he's been here. Probably even spent some nights here, by the look of it.

It's all I can do not to burst out laughing at the look on his face.  He's trying to be so nonchalant about it, but he's nearly bursting, waiting for me to make some sort of comment.

I make him wait until all the groceries are put away. I know him.  If I'd even blinked, he would have had me out of the kitchen and off to see what else he's been up to, and fuck knows when we would have gotten back to the groceries. So I make sure that they're out of the way first.

Then I say, real casual, "I haven't seen it without all the dust covers and shit. How is the place looking?"

I'm rewarded with something that's damned near a blush. Then he gives me that lips-pulled-in look that always makes me want to kiss him, and takes my hand to lead me out through the dining room to the hall. After that, he lets me decide. I wander through the ground floor to the big room with the fireplace where we first made love in this house. There's a thick rug in front of the fireplace now - not a fur rug, but something richly colored and thickly piled. I look over my shoulder at him and grin. His answering smile warms the whole room.

I realized that I'd expected him to have furnished this house like the loft … but he must have decided that style wouldn't suit this place so well. The look here is no less elegant, but it's warmer - more color and more textures.

"I haven't done much," he says suddenly. "I just wanted … I needed …"

He breaks off and when I look at him now, he's not smiling. His face is full of remembered pain; I feel my own surge up to meet it. I turn to him and open my arms; he comes into them with a lurch, and I hold him tightly. We cling together for a long time.

Eventually, we manage to loosen our death grip on each other, although I find myself still holding on to his hand as he walks me through the rooms that he's furnished: this room, the small room that opens onto the garden that we'd thought would make a good study or home office for him, the room above it with the huge windows that he'd thought would make a studio for me. He hasn't done much to that room, but he's had some stands placed around the walls, to display any work that I want to think about, had some racks installed so that I can store canvases, and there's an easel and two work benches - one of which could serve as a computer desk. Three's also a long chaise, a lot like the one in the loft, and a couple of deep armchairs, placed so that they look out the window. As I walk around studying it all, he follows me and all the time we remain constantly in touch, his hand on my back, mine twined through his, or resting on his arm.  Just touching. Reminding ourselves that we can. Reminding ourselves that the months of starving for those little touches are over.  Reminding each other that we're here, we're together, we're okay.

"We can change it … anything you want …"

I turn to him and let him see my happiness. I touch his face and look deep into his eyes. I don't say anything. I don't have to. He knows. He knows how much this means to me.

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Brian

I can hardly hold it together when he smiles at me. I want to tell him, I want to scream at him that I never thought that he'd actually stand here and see this. I never really believed that he would ever lift a brush or put a single line on paper or canvas here. I put this room together because it was the only thing I could do. I had no words to express how much I wanted him, needed him. And even if I did - there was no one I could tell.

Linds isn't here. Mikey … Mikey, when he hasn't been totally fucking caught up in his own problems, and Ben's, has been trying to help me face "reality" - the reality that Justin wasn't ever coming home. He thought he was helping me. He doesn't seem to have any idea how much it all hurt. It was as if the fact that I was in such pain somehow took the edge off his own dramas. Deb's been worried about me, I know. So have Ted and Emmett. And they've helped. Sort of. In a way.

But I couldn't … if I didn't believe he was ever coming back, how the fuck was I supposed to admit to anyone how much I needed him to?

Least of all to him.

So, in this last couple of months, while I felt him slipping further and further away, the only thing I could do was to come out here and spend some time in fantasy land. Making believe that one day he'd be here; one day I'd show him this room, and he'd smile at me, just like he's doing now. Because he'd know what this says about how much I love him, how much I need him, how much I want to have a life with him.

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Justin

Love, sheer blazing love for him, is surging through me. I don't think that I've ever felt it so strongly. I don't think I've ever known so absolutely how much he loves me. I can feel the joy of that fizzing through me. I almost expect to see sparks sizzling from my fingertips where they touch his face. I'm filled with light and wonder and happiness so bright, so dazzling, that my whole body crackles with it.

But at the look in his eyes …I want to weep for all the pain this separation has caused him. Well, caused us both. But it was on my account. He went through it all for me. He knew that all he had to do, all he ever had to do, was ask me to stay, ask me to come back, and I would have been here. But he didn't. He suffered all this just to let me have what he thought I wanted, what he believed I needed.

Somehow, someday, I have to find a way to repay him for that. But first, and most importantly, I have to make sure that he knows that this is what I want, what I need. He is what I need.

And most definitely what I want.

Then, just like that, the energy between us changes.

It happens, as it does with us sometimes, so fast it takes my breath away. I reach for his belt, and he's already pulling at my sweater.  I lean away from him as I get his pants undone, and sink to the floor at his feet. Even before I touch him, before I have time to free his cock from its prison to the warm welcome of my mouth, he gives a funny little sigh of contentment, and I feel his hands tangle in my hair.

My own cock hardens at the smell of him, and, as my tongue begins to trace its favorite paths over the veins and ridges of his, I take it in one hand and jack myself. He has his eyes closed, and for a while, he doesn't realize what I'm doing. When he does, he puts a finger under my chin to make me look up at him. Or maybe he just wants a better view of his dick moving between my lips.

"I could make it worth your while to wait," he offers with that sideways grin.

I give a choked laugh, pull away from his hand, and deep throat him, breathing deeply though my nose; the smell of him, the feel of his cock down my throat and the feel of his pubes against my nose and face making my balls tighten. I jack harder and suck deeply and he comes, tangy-salty-hot and delicious. I swallow hungrily, and the action and the taste trigger my own orgasm.

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Brian

It takes me a moment or two to get my breath back, to stop my knees from buckling and keep myself from falling to the floor beside him.  Instead, I pull myself together and help him up.

Christ! I didn't want to fuck him today. I know he's sore from last night. But if he keeps doing things like that … damned if I mightn't have to let him fuck me. Again. He did that last night, too. But only the once, so I guess I could go again this afternoon.

Little shit!

I pull him to me, and whisper in his ear, "Are you trying to seduce me, Sunshine?"

Just for a moment he pulls back, he must be sorer than I'd thought.  Then he gets what I'm asking, and laughs.

"Well," he says, sliding a hand round to cup my ass, "I wasn't … but if that's what it takes …"

I grin at him, and he grins back and bumps his shoulder against mine.

"You going to show me the bedroom?" he says with a wanna-be leer.

I laugh at him, and he grins even wider and then I have to kiss him.

He's in my arms, and I hold him, just hold him, and I don't know how to let him go. But he solves that problem by wrapping his arms around me, too. He rests his chin on my collar bone and looks up at me with a smile that makes me believe. It actually makes me believe in this. In us. In a future that has us together. I can't … there aren't words. I cup the side of his face in the palm of my hand and rub my thumb over his cheek.

His smile is so bright it dazzles me. Or maybe there's something in my eyes. But that smile. It's been so long since I've seen that smile.

I should have known he wasn't happy in New York. I should have fucking known. Because I never saw that smile there. Smiles, yes.  But not this smile. There was always something in his eyes. Fear, or pain, or … just something.

"Why didn't you just tell me you wanted to come home?" I find myself asking him.

His smile wavers for a moment, and he ducks his head, burying his face in the hollow of my shoulder. He doesn't say anything for a moment. And when he does it's so muffled I can hardly understand him. But finally I make it out.

"I couldn't, Brian."

That's what he says. Then, when I'm about to ask him why the fuck not, he goes on, "I needed you to be proud of me. Not to think that I'm some pussy little faggot who didn't have the balls to go for it."

While I'm trying to wrap my brain around that, he says even more quietly. "I needed to know that about myself, too, I guess."

He gives a big sigh, and wraps his arms around me even tighter. "But it was so fucking hard."

He looks up at me then and finally says, "I meant what I said this morning. I don't want to do that any more. It isn't who I am. And it isn't what I want."

He looks around the room, and then at me.

"This is what I want."

Then his face sort of … crumples and loses all that glow he had just a minute before.

"If it's still on the table, that is," he whispers.

Fuck!

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Justin

I think for a moment that I've made him angry. He puts his hands on my shoulders and shakes me. Really shakes me.

And I've never seen his face look like that. Never.

So bright and fierce and …

Happy.

My breath just stops in my throat when I realize that.

He's happy. He's so fucking happy he looks likely to burst with it.  He gives a funny little gasp, and tries to bank it down, but I'm not having that. I reach for his ribs, for his ticklish spot.

"None of that, you fucker," I growl "I'm onto you. Remember?"

And for some reason that strikes us both as hilarious and suddenly we're laughing like a pair of hyenas. Holding onto each other and laughing. And then we're kissing. And then he's leading me down the hallway to the master bedroom.

He flings open the door, stands back and I walk in expecting … well, I don't know what I was expecting, but it sure as hell isn't a completely bare and empty room. Not even a fucking futon on the floor. Nothing. A few odd wisps of that dust ball stuff that congregates everywhere - where the hell does that stuff come from, anyway?

But nothing else.

I turn my head to stare at him.

"You expect us to sleep here?"

It's the first thing that comes into what passes for my mind.

He shrugs. "There are beds in the other rooms," he says.

Then he falls silent.

And that's when I realize. He couldn't do this room. It was too close, too personal. How could he do this room for us, and then sleep in it alone?

I back up against him and his arms come round my chest, holding me in place. I put one hand over his, and wave the other towards the window. It's raining now. The cold hard spring rain that always comes as a shock.

"Don't want to be driving back in that," I say.

I feel the huff of his laugh against my hair.

"No, don't want to be doing that," he says.

I turn in his arms, and smile at him. It was raining the first time he brought me here, too.

"Let's light the fire," I tell him and love the way his eyes light - with love and with memories and with hope. Hope for us. For our future. Together.

I still think this house is way too big. We'd need a fucking army of servants to keep it clean, and there are definitely way too many rooms for uninvited guests.

But that's an argument for another day.

For today. We're here. We're together. And that's enough to make this Home.

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