"Brian Kinney. What does your therapist make of that?" Cody did not look up.
Justin tried to dim his smile. "What are you talking about?"
"Sex. With Brian Kinney. The resident roadside Lothario of Liberty Avenue. Is this recommended therapy for a person suffering from clinical depression?"
Now Justin's smile did disappear. "I thought you said I didn't need a therapist."
"Doesn't mean you're not depressed."
Justin felt exasperation rising in him. "Isn't therapy the answer to depression? Or do you want me to get on antidepressants?"
Cody turned to look at him, placing the papers he was working on in front of him. "All I know is, seeing a therapist because your parole officer makes you see one, and an over-worked state employee at that, is an utter waste of time. Doesn't change the fact that you're severely depressed."
"Ok, whatever. This conversation is pointless. I'm depressed and my therapist is useless. Got it."
"Are you fucking out of your mind?" This time, it was Cody's exasperation that was obvious. "Look at your track record. The first time you gave your precious heart away, the guy tried to kill you, and you did time for defending yourself. Now that you're finally stringing your life together, you fall for Brian Kinney? Who's going to throw you to the curb as soon as his fucking tattoo is done? Do you have some kind of death wish? Is that why you're chasing guys who will reject you in nineteen different ways?" Cody pushed away the papers in front of him in disgust. "Praise the Lord Kinney isn't the violent kind," he chanted, about three octaves higher than his normal pitch.
"Stop it!"
Hearing the truth was not a pleasant experience for anybody.
"And I have no desire to 'string my life together'. My life died the day Hobbs died. I just need to survive. Wake up in the morning. Go to bed at night. Eat. Drink. Survive."
Cody raised an eyebrow. "And Brian Kinney is what, exactly? Food? Alcohol? Water? Sleeping pills? An alarm clock, perhaps?"
Justin sighed and rubbed his temples. "It's just sex. Was. It was just sex."
"And the next four sittings he's going to come in for? It's just going to be sex then as well, I suppose. Listen, Justin, it's been quite clearly established that you're an idiot, but please, don't group me in that category. Feed your bullshit to someone else. Like the one who just walked in through the door," he added, as Brian walked in.
"So…how come you want a tattoo? That too, when your friends seem to have the final word. You don't seem the type to be told what to do."
Brian shrugged in response, and earned a rebuking from Justin. "Don't fucking move! Goddammit, now I have to do this all over again." Justin glared, though Brian couldn't possibly see the glare, unless he had eyes at the back of his head. "Talk, but do NOT move."
Justin went to get some alcohol to erase the tracing he had begun.
"Chill out, would you? You barely got started." Brian had the audacity to laugh. This time, he actually got to see Justin's withering glare. "Ok, ok, Picasso, I won't move."
"Well? Why are you getting a tattoo?" Justin asked in a conciliatory tone; he figured that it wasn't Brian's fault that he was obsessive about his work to the point of insanity.
"Pfffffffffffffft. Slutalia."
"Huh? What's a 'Slutalia'?"
"Slutalia is what I like to call the dumb blonde fuckwit that the senior partner at my firm – office – is screwing. I believe others refer to her as Natalia."
"Uh-huh. And you…don't believe in interoffice romance? How prudish."
Brian snorted. "I don't believe in romance, period. Love is for bourgeois suckers, who want sappy bullshit to cloud their judgement and induce delusions that, without a doubt, ultimately fucks them over. Romance is for the weak and stupid."
Justin maintained a calm exterior.
It's. Just. Sex.
It's. Just. Sex.
It's. Just. Sex.
There was no need for Brian's rant to stab at him so hard.
"Riiight. So what do you believe in?"
"I don't believe in romance and love and related bullshit. I believe in fucking. It's honest, it's efficient - you get in and out with a maximum of pleasure and a minimum of bullshit."
Cynical to the core – a man after my own heart, Justin thought bitterly. "You were telling me about Slutalia. And how she's responsible for you getting a tattoo."
"Aaah, yes. Well, Vance can fuck her, or anybody else. I don't give a shit. But it becomes a problem when said fucking leads to promotions and important designations for utterly incompetent creatures."
"Talk all you want, but don't you fucking dare move a muscle." Justin started tracing the design onto Brian's back. Again.
"Right. We wouldn't want poor Justin to start all over now, would we? So much better things to do with our time, I believe." Brian's voice took a dangerously lusty tone.
"Are you trying to make me horny? Because, word of advice, you shouldn't want to induce twitching muscles and spasms and distractions to the person that's working on permanently branding your back. With a very sharp tool." Justin replied flippantly.
"And my talking isn't a distraction?" Brian sounded disappointed.
"Not when it's about a dumb blonde. Stories like that are background music. And I'm curious. You don't want a curious man etching your back, either."
"Is that supposed to be a threat?" Brian sounded amused.
"It's supposed to be tell-me-the-fucking-story-already!"
"Jeez. Fine. Well, Vance bought the agency from the previous owner a few months ago, so technically, we're all still on 'probation'. Vance knows she's as dumb as a post. He just wants to maintain the benefits, so he makes her someone else's headache. He promoted her to the traffic department, and she gave the departments wrong deadlines on one of my pitches, mixed up the photography recs, spilled coffee on the mock-ups, and fed peanuts to my allergic-to-peanuts Art Director the night before the presentation. Amongst many other fuck ups. Needless to say, nothing was ready, in spite of all of us working overtime to get everything done. I managed to smooth it over with the client and get an extension for the presentation."
"So…no harm done?"
"You would think so." Brian sighed. "But. I had actually made a bet with Ted and Michael months ago that by end of last month, I'd have the account. Obviously, an extension on a presentation is not the same as having the account, and, when you make a bet with an accountant, they become worse than lawyers. Worse than Lucifer."
"You know, that's kind of funny…I bet they wanted you to get a tattoo because it would mar your perfect body…"
Brian growled in response.
"Ok, so maybe not that funny. But it is smart. And a lesson in narcissism."
"I'm not a fucking narcissist."
Justin guffawed. "Oh please."
"Hmf. Well, a tattoo will only mar my perfect body if the tattoo isn't perfect. So, you better make sure that tattoo is fucking perfect."
Justin smiled. "Or else?" he teased.
"Or else, you will face punishment like you've never known before."
Punishment…
Justin's mind clouded over, as he remembered the Pine Grove State Correctional Institution. His mother's face appeared, her last visit, a few months after he had been incarcerated. She was crying, apologising, saying that they were moving, for Molly's sake…she wouldn't be coming to see him anymore…
Molly…Daphne…
Daphne had come to see him every week, until her parents forbade it. She had written to him faithfully, until she went to Europe for the summer, and then college and…it was easy to lose touch with a person who was in prison. He hadn't seen or heard from Daphne for years…she probably wasn't even in Pittsburgh anymore.
Punishment was having the person you were in love with try and kill you. Punishment was killing another person, losing your family, your friends, your life…
Yeah, I very much doubt that you could show me punishment I've never known before, Brian.
"Well?"
Justin realised that Brian had asked him something while he had been lost in thought. There was no way to get out of this without looking like a fool.
"I'm sorry Brian, I was…I was thinking about the colours here, and got distracted. What was that again?"
"Is that why you don't have a tattoo? You think it'll mar your body? Seems an odd principle to have, working at a tattoo parlour."
Justin shrugged, though Brian could not see him.
"It's hard to have principles when you're a segment of society often considered to be sub-human and outliers. I certainly don't have many left."
"Why would you be considered sub-human? Just because you're into this stuff? It isn't the '40s, Justin, and besides, we're queers. We embrace difference, not shun it."
Justin contemplated that briefly. It was definitely true that queer society was more accepting, but…a murderer was a murderer. There was just no getting away from that.
Brian was still speaking. "Besides, outliers are all the rage. I'm an outlier."
Justin laughed. "No, no you're not. You just like to think of yourself as one. You're a leader. You're different because you lead, not follow. But you're not an outlier from society. You have a very mainstream job. You have a family – a non-traditional, non-blood related one, but a family. You have friends. You…you're very mainstream. If you take the skeletal framework of what society expects, you've ticked off all those boxes. You stand out not because you're an outlier, but because you're a leader."
"No one in my entire fucking life has called me 'mainstream'."
Justin laughed. "Clearly, they were all scared of you."
"And you're not scared?"
"Not of a goddamn thing." Which was true.
"So, what principles do you have left?"
Justin was surprised at how easy it was to talk to Brian.
"Be clean before your friends."
"I'm not sure what that means."
"You remember Cody? The other guy here? His tattoo of the Madonna and baby Jesus? I'm the one who did the drawing for that. That's what it means. Be clean before your friends. Never betray them. Your friends will be all you have, when the whole world abandons you. Be true to them."
The image itself was not religious, and its symbolic meaning came from prison lore, but Justin kept that detail to himself.
"So how come you didn't get that tattoo?"
"Because tattoos have more than one meaning. There's what you see, there's what people see, there's what you want people to see. But it's also a permanent reminder of your life at that moment in time. Like a photograph you can never lose. And…all the moments in my life…I don't want that reminder."
"You can't tell me you've never had that moment in life when you weren't happy. Or free. I know you were ecstatic when I fucked you."
Justin laughed. "That's it, Brian. I'm going to get a tattoo that represents that exact moment in time when your dick was up my ass."
Beyond the joke though, Justin could see the truth of it. Being with Brian he was free. Of not being burdened by his past, of not having an image to live up to, of not having to care, of not being reminded…
"We've all had that one moment." Brian repeated.
"When I was a kid, yeah. Not since I was…seventeen."
"Your parents kicked you out when they found out you were gay?"
"Don't all parents?" Justin responded lightly. It was easier than the truth.
"Hmmm." Brian was silent for a while. "Wanna grab a beer at Woody's after this?" he asked, after a few minutes.
