Title: Keep On Missing You
Pairing: Brian/Justin
Warnings: Alternative Universe; One-Shot
Story notes: Brian and Justin are the same age.
Summary: Brian and Justin meet when they're both seven and Justin and his mother had just moved to Pittsburgh after she had divorced with his father. Through the next years, they keep on missing each other even though their families are united. Twenty-three years later when they're both thirty, they finally meet again.
Pittsburgh – Summer – 1980
"How come you're living here now?" A seven years old Brian asked while throwing a ball in Justin's direction.
The little blond shrugged. "I don't know. Mom said that we had to get away from Dad."
"Does this mean that we're gonna see each other all the time?" The brunet still had to decide if he was happy to have a new friend or not.
"I don't know" Justin shook his head. "Mom said that we're gonna find our own place. But she didn't tell me where."
Brian caught the ball in his hands. He was the same age of Justin, but he was taller. He took the two steps that divided him from the blond and smiled down at him. "In case we won't see each other ever again, it was cool meeting you Justin."
The blond playfully shoved the brunet away. "C'mon Brian! We're practically cousins! Of course we're gonna see each other again."
Brian shook his head. "We're not practically cousins. Your mother's brother, is my aunt's husband. We aren't related." He wanted to show the blond that he was clever, but Justin just laughed at him.
"You're sooooooo annoying" he said before running back inside the house.
Pittsburgh – Autumn – 1993
"So, Justin, how is it going with college?" Jack sat down next to Justin on the steps outside the young man's house.
The blond shrugged. "Ok I guess."
"It's great to know. Brian is doing very well. We're all proud of him. He's starting his third year in a couple of weeks."
Justin looked up from his sketchpad. "I'm starting my fourth. I'm going back to New York in a week."
Jack nodded and threw an arm around the shoulders of the blond ruffling his hair as he used to do when Justin was just a kid. "I'm very proud of you too. It's not common to skip a year of Middle School."
"Mom wanted me to" he said dismissively. "It's not something so great."
"You're always so modest. It's something valuable." He looked at the sketchpad resting in the blond's lap and picked it up. "You have an amazing talent. Maybe one day you and Brian could work together in advertising."
Justin suddenly had a faraway look on his face. It had been a little over thirteen years since he had last saw Brian. After that summer when him and his mother had come to Pittsburgh from Seattle after his parents had divorced, Justin had never saw Brian again. It was absurd. He had saw Joan and Jack hundreds of times, but it always looked like Brian was never with them.
He was used to heard stories about Brian through his parents, and it always made him feel a little nostalgic. At the end of that Summer, they were like one item. They had spent the whole three months together. But then Jennifer, Justin's mother, had find a little house in another town not very far from Pittsburgh and they had moved. Ever since, Brian and Justin had never crossed path again.
When high school was over, Justin had chose New York for its school of arts and Brian had gone to Carnegie Mellon. It looked to Justin, like fate was against them and what he hated the most, was hearing about Brian's boyfriends, Brian's nights out when he had never really forgot him.
It was crazy, he always thought, that they had shared something when nothing more than kids, and he still became nervous every time he knew that he could meet Brian. Every time he and his mother went to visit Jack and Joan during the school breaks, he always hoped that Brian might have been there but he was always out with a friend or a boyfriend.
"Justin?"
He looked up into his uncle's eyes. "Yeah?"
The older man smiled gently at him. "Where did you go with your mind?"
Justin shrugged. "I was just thinking about something."
"You know, when I talk with Brian about you, he has that look too."
The blond laughed. "I doubt." He stood up and extended his hand to his uncle. "May I have my sketchpad back, please?"
Jack handed it over and looked straight into the blue eyes of his nephew. "I'm glad that you had the opportunity of going to New York and experiment with your creativity."
"Thanks uncle" he said before going back inside.
New York – Winter – 1997
"Mom I know that Justin is here," Brian sighed exasperated while pacing his hotel room. "What am I supposed to do? Call him and say 'Hey Jus! Remember seventeen years ago when we used to play together?' and then what?"
He threw himself down on the couch. "Brian, honey, I've told you a million times that you had to come over to Jennifer's house from time to time."
"Why?" he asked, closing his eyes and pinching the bridge of his nose. He could feel a headache coming. "What's the point?"
"Because you two were good friends and I can't believe that you haven't saw each other in seventeen years. Now, you're in New York, he's in New York, go visit him!" Joan's voice was resolute and held no space for discussions.
"Mom!" Brian whined feeling a lot like he was a kid all over again. "I don't know the guy!"
"Don't call him 'the guy' Brian Kinney! Jennifer is very worried about him. He hasn't been at home in over a year. Find him and talk to him. It's all I'm asking!"
"I don't even know where he's living! You know, in case you forgot, New York is not exactly Belleville."
"Find him!" Joan said before hanging up.
Brian threw the phone across the room and sighed heavily.
In all those years, Brian had always thought about Justin. There were times when he would simply letting his mind wander and he would end up thinking about the blond. He had heard stories about him from his dad and his mother and from Jennifer. He had even asked himself a hundred times how he could think about Justin and automatically feel butterflies in his stomach. He didn't even know if maybe he had turned out fat or bald or whatever else. But somehow, he knew that if he had never gone to visit Jennifer when Justin was in town, was because he was afraid that seeing him again after all those years, was going to awakening something inside him that he didn't want to feel.
He had told his mother and father that he had a lot of boyfriends, but the truth was that he had never even fucked anyone twice because somewhere in the depth of his mind, he knew that Justin was going to be the one changing everything.
He sighed, standing up from the coach and going to retrieve his cell phone. He dialed the number of the switchboard.
"Good evening, how may I help you?"
"I need the number of Justin Taylor." Brian waited in silence until the girl on the phone gave him the number and then said good-bye and hang up. He stared at the number for a long time before taking a deep breath and dialing. He waited, letting the phone ringing, and finally someone picked up.
"Hello?" answered someone with an Italian accent.
"Sorry, I must have the wrong number" Brian said ready to hang up.
"Wait, who're looking for?"
"Justin Taylor."
"Oh he's here. One moment please. Love you have someone on the phone for you!" Brian heard being shout and stupidly felt himself getting angry at the man answering Justin's phone.
"You know what," he said into the phone. "Never mind. Just tell him to call Jennifer."
"You sure?"
"Yeah" he quickly hang up and then went into the bathroom to take a shower.
Pittsburg – Spring – 2000
"Clair!" Justin hugged her tightly. "I'm so happy for you."
The woman hugged him back smiling. "Thank you, Jus. I'm happy that you could make it. I know how much you're busy."
"I'd always make time for you. So, where's the husband? And sorry if I couldn't make it to the Church."
Clair shook her head grabbing Justin's hand and leading him to the other side of the restaurant. "It's ok. But you missed Brian once again. He was there but then had to go back to New York."
Justin felt a strange feeling spreading within him. He knew that Brian had been living in New York for the last two years and even knowing that the chances of meeting him in a restaurant or in a bar, in a club or anywhere else, were pretty much none, he still had hoped to meet him again. Then, he had remembered that he wouldn't have been able to recognize him. He couldn't hide that he had hoped to finally being able to see him after twenty years. No such luck.
Pittsburgh – New Year Eve – 2002
"Hey Uncle!" Justin greeted as soon as he stepped inside the house with Jennifer. "Thanks for inviting me" he said hugging Jack.
"No need to thank. Jen, I'm glad that you convinced him into coming. No such luck with Brian." The old man shook his head.
Joan rushed both Jennifer and Justin inside the house since it was snowing copiously. "Yeah he was going to Times Square with his boyfriend."
Justin did his best to prevent his emotions to show on his face. He smiled at his aunt and hugged her. "Well, I will be enough for today" he said smiling and Joan laughed.
They spent a nice evening. Justin eat everything his aunt had cooked.
When midnight strike, the phone rang. The blond could hear his aunt and uncle wishing Brian and his boyfriend a happy new year and he felt the impelling need to run as fast as he could, away from that house.
Pittsburgh – Summer – 2003
Justin took a sip from his glass of wine and looked towards the tables where family and friends, were celebrating his mother's new marriage.
Sighing, he put his glass down and started walking over to the swimming pool. He lighted up a cigarette and looked up at the sky.
Brian was missing once again. It felt like every time, they just kept on missing each other. It was Summer again. Twenty-three years since they last saw each other. They were both thirty now.
Brian was leading a successful AD company in both New York and Pittsburgh. Last year he had moved back to Pittsburgh not long after Justin had moved back too. Still, they had managed to miss each other all the time.
He closed his eyes, took a deep breath and looked down into the pool's water. It was night, but the lights on the bottom of the swimming pool were lighting up the water, making it possible, for him, to find a long figure standing next to him.
He felt his breath catch in his throat and in nothing more than a whisper, he said "Brian" with the certainty that even if the last time he had laid eyes on the other man, they were seven, who was standing beside him, was him.
Justin looked up, locking eyes with a pair of familiar hazel ones.
Brian smirked, still trying to understand what had made him cross the meadow as soon as he had spot the blond, somehow sure, that it was his blond.
"It's been a while," Brian said quietly, letting his eyes study the new body of whom once had been a playmate. The hair were long and blond as he had remembered, as it was in the pictures that he had kept from that summer of so many years before. But Justin was taller, builder… where once had been a little boy, was now a man. Finally, Brian's errant eyes came to a rest on the cherry-red lips that were starting to bent into a smile.
"You could say that," Justin quietly whispered studying him too, the man in front of his eyes. Brian's hair was cut in a more stylish way, his body was clearly muscular under the black suite. Not built as a bodybuilder's body, but in the slight way that made him look like one of the Greek bronzes that he had so loved while studying art.
Their eyes locked. Blue and hazel. Both holding the faintest spark of surprise because somehow, they knew that even if they had kept on missing each other, that was the right night to find the other again. It was Summer after all.
"Where's the boyfriend?" they both asked at the same time.
Brian smirked and shrugged. "Never had one."
Justin looked confused. "What you mean?" he asked.
Another shrug. "I had to tell something to the folks. Somehow, I thought that knowing that their son was a slut, was not going to make them feel very proud."
The blond just shook his head and laughed. "All these years, I've been hearing stories about your boyfriends and…" he trailed off. Cleared his throat and diverted his gaze.
Brian took a step forward. "And?" he asked daringly.
Justin sighed. "Doesn't matter."
The other man nodded. Thinking how pathetic they must have looked, standing there, grown up of thirty years old, afraid to look into the other's eyes.
"Where's yours?"
"Mine what?" Justin asked once again confused.
"Your boyfriend."
"I don't have one" he answered shaking his head.
Brian frowned. "So it's over with the Italian."
Justin's eyes opened wide. "It was you that night two years ago?"
The other man looked everywhere but at the blond's face
"That was Mario" Justin said smirking and shaking his head. "And it was never my boyfriend. He was just the roommate."
"He called you 'love'," Brian retorted annoyed.
Justin wrinkled his nose and smiled at Brian. "You're jealous" he said quietly and then laughed. Brian glared at him and the blond held up his hands in surrender. "Sorry I shouldn't been laughing when I've been jealous of every one of your boyfriends that, as I've just discovered, were non-existent. You should be the one laughing at me."
Brian's eyes softened at that. Rolling his lips in his mouth he gave a brief nod. "So you weren't having the love that you oh so desperately wanted when we were kids?" He did his best to use a mocking tone despite his own feelings.
Justin became serious again. "No" he said determinate. He looked back into the water. "Not with anyone of the men I had."
The brunet studied intently Justin's features. He smiled. "God, you're beautiful" he said whispering. That caught the blond's attention making him look back into the smiling hazel eyes.
"You too" he said blushing slightly.
Brian looked back, towards the tables where everyone was celebrating Jennifer and Tucker and smiled. He looked back at Justin deciding that this was the moment.
"I just kept on missing you. It was frustrating," he said quietly.
Justin stared intensely into Brian's eyes. "I thought I was going to keep on missing you for the rest of my life" he could feel his own fear pouring in his words, unable to stop it. "Glad I was wrong" he added in nothing more than a whisper.
Brian took a deep breath. 'It's now or never' he told himself. He closed the gap between them, took Justin firmly by the shoulders and covered his mouth with his own.
Across the park, Jennifer smiled looking at Joan. "Guess we were right," she said happily.
"I always thought that they just needed the chance to meet again." For the first time, Joan looked at his son and could tell that he was going to be really happy. "Maybe we should start arranging for another wedding."
Jennifer looked at her surprised. "Don't you think it's a little bit premature?"
Joan watched as Briana and Justin parted. His son rested his forehead against the blond's and Justin's arms closed around his waist. "No Jen, I don't think so."
-The End-