June Part 1

June Pt. 1

"Did you mean it? I mean about us going away for a couple of weeks?"

Brian looked up from the computer. "Yes, I meant it. I just have to finish this report and clear up a few things."

Justin came around behind him, wrapping his arms around the larger man's shoulders and kissing his neck as he looked at the graphics on the screen. "Where are we going?"

He managed a few more keystrokes before answering. "...I spoke to your grandparents last week. They said that they'd let us use their place in Canada."

"Brian? Really? Oh, God—you'll love it!"

He turned to face the youngster. "Good. Now leave me the fuck alone so I can get this done." God, how the fuck was he going to pull this off?

A week later they were taking the water taxi across the roughly miles to the house. It was located on the Rideau Lake in Ontario, about and hour or so above the New York State line. There was no road to the house; the car was left at the marina. For decades there were no phones, but the grandparents increasing age had forced the precaution of adding a line just last year in case of emergency. The only other communication with the main land was by boat, of which the grandparents owned three. There was the antique CrisCraft, a 26 foot mahogany beauty that Justin was afraid to start, a small outboard for the kids to use and a rowboat for fishing. They had all been prepped for summer.

The house was just that. It was no cabin, no cottage. It sat on about twenty acres, had four bedrooms, a fireplace, two porches, a guesthouse and a boathouse. It was winterized for year round use.

The place was a gem. It was rustic and unpretentious. It had old samplers stitched by long dead relatives and framed photos of deceased family pets and mounted prize fish on the walls. The furniture was the sort that grandchildren would sit on with wet bathing suits and not be scolded.

It's name (as homes on the lake were all named, not numbered) was 'Peace a Plenty'.

It was perfect.

Justin had spent most of the summers of his life there. He loved it wholeheartedly and without reservation.

They carried their bags and the groceries they'd brought with them up from where they had been deposited on the dock, unlocked the front door, opened a few windows and unpacked their clothes in a front bedroom upstairs. It was the one with the picture window view of the lake.

Justin managed to get the water heater working and the power had been turned on earlier that week. Dinner was a steak and some salad along with some cold beer.

They were sitting on the old glider on the enclosed front porch, Justin resting against Brian, watching the occasional running lights of a passing boat. The sun had set a couple of hours ago and they were finally relaxed against one another after the long drive up and the last few months. They could hear loons calling.

Pulling Brian's hand up to his mouth, Justin kissed his knuckles. "You know it's our anniversary? Six months."

"Oh, Christ. You're not going to start that shit, are you?"

Justin turned, kissing him. "It's not shit."

Brian was about to make some rejoinder but seemingly changed his mind, pulling Justin down to lie against him again. "This is the first time we've been really alone together, I think since we've known each other."

"For more than just a day or two, yeah."

"It feels good."

The next morning Justin stretched, waking slowly. The sun was coming through the windows; he could hear a boat going by. There was a faint smell of coffee. He was alone.

Shit.

He looked over at the clock. It was almost eleven.

He pulled on a pair of jeans and a tee, stopped in the bathroom and found Brian with his laptop set up, modem connected to the new phone line, working on the dining room table.

Kissing the back of his neck, he said, "I didn't know you'd brought that. I thought you were just going to relax."

"I just had to check a couple of things. There's coffee if you want it."

"Thanks, You want some more?"

Brian nodded, absorbed in whatever was on the screen. Sighing, Justin wandered to the kitchen to get the pot.

"I'll bring one of the boats around front. There are all these great things I want to show you. Did you know there's an old Indian graveyard on one of the back islands that almost no one knows about? And there's an old mica mine—well that's what we always called it, anyway."

Brian joined him by the stove where he had started to cook up some eggs. "I just have to finish going over a couple of things. You eat and get dressed and I should be done when you're ready."

Two hours later Justin was waiting down on the dock. He had eaten, gotten dressed, cleaned his teeth, finished unpacking, cleaned the kitchen, brought the boat to the front from the boat house, done some quick sketches and was now just waiting.

Shit.

Giving up, he went back up. Brian hadn't moved. He glanced at the screen. There were notes on some meeting and some rough drafts about some campaign.

"Brian, you about ready?"

"...Yeah, just a minute."

Twenty minutes later. "Brian? I'm going into town to get some more supplies. I'll be back in an hour or so."

"...OK."

Two hours later Justin was back with the groceries. He handed Brian a turkey sandwich on whole wheat, no mayo while he tapped on the keyboard. "Thanks."

"Brian? You going to be ready to go soon?"

"Yeah, as soon as I finish this." He didn't even look up.

Shit.

Justin decided to take a walk down the shore. He'd thought he'd seen a boat go into the dock area of the cottage a half a mile down. Named The Wedding Cake, it was round, white, three stories and looked like its name. The owners were old friends, maybe they were there. Making his way down the path he saw Iver on the dock, doing something with the outboard engine, fixing something.

"Hey! I didn't know your family was here already. Look at you, a big college student now." Justin gave Iver a quick hug, a manly hug. Iver was the one who had taught him to fish.

"They're not. I'm here for a couple of weeks with..."

"I know, your girlfriend."

"...My husband."

"Whatever." Justin didn't say anything. "I heard you. It doesn't matter to me, just as long as he's good enough for you."

That smile broke out. "He is."

"So, when did all this happen?"

Iver handed him a large hank of rope to carry to the shed. "Just after Christmas."

"Newlywed, eh?"

"Yup."

"Things going alright? The first year takes some getting used to."

"We're fine. He just works a lot, that's all."

The rope hung on a hook and the old spark plugs tossed in a pail; they walked up to the house.

"So you're visiting me while he's working down at your place."

"Right."

In the kitchen Iver handed Justin one of the two beers he'd gotten from the old fridge. "So take his computer—he brought it, right?" Justin nodded. "Take his computer and either hide it or toss it in the damn lake."

Laughing, Justin said, "He'd kill me."

"And he'll kill himself, or your marriage if you don't. I see the look on your face."

"Iver..."

"Don't hand me that. You know I've been reading you like a book since you were five years old. You love this other boy and I'll wager he loves you, but you just have to sit him down and have a talk."

"He won't listen. His work is ..."

"More important than you are or your marriage?" Iver saw the hesitation. "...If that's the case, you have some thinking to do."

Two beers later and with the sun starting to set, Justin headed home. Brian was sitting down on the dock; jeans rolled up and bare feet in the water, smoking a joint.

"I thought we were going out, but you disappeared."

Slightly drunk, Justin didn't feel conciliatory. "I thought we were going out six hours ago. And why the fuck did you bring the laptop?"

Sighing, Brian lay back on the dock, his feet still in the water. Taking Justin's hand, he pulled him down to lie next to him. "There's a lot going on now and if I don't stay on top of it what I'm hoping to do will fall to shit."

"...Then why did we come here now and what the fuck is it you're trying to do?"

Another toke, hand back and forth. "The steel accounts have opened up some other possible big clients. If I can land them and bring some of my old clients with me, I'll be in a position to break off and start my own agency."

Justin rolled onto his side, head in hand. "Are you sure you want to do that?"

"It's what I've wanted since I was twenty." That was Justin's age now. "Of course I'm fucking sure." He looked a challenge at Justin, daring him to say anything.

"You're practically working yourself into the ground now. If you try to open your own place, the workload will double."

"Only for a while, then I'll be able to back off a little."

"Brian...bullshit. You've never backed off in our fucking life. You spent the entire day on the fucking computer." He was going to start a harangue but stopped. "We could have postponed this trip or gone somewhere else another time."

The sky was painted an incredible array of pinks and blues and purples and golds. The islands around the lake and the shoreline had gone black.

"No. We needed to get away now."

Justin leaned in to place his mouth on Brian's. At first he met some resistance as if Brian still wanted to talk, but in a few seconds he had allowed Justin to part his lips with his tongue and they were tasting each other's mouths. The smooth glides, the moist, the warmth, the hardness of teeth, the caress of lips were all familiar. They'd done this a hundred, a thousand times before. There was nothing unexpected here; they knew all there was to know about one another's body and how each would react to the different touches and emotions. There was something about getting high that always made Brian impossibly horny—the running joke was that it was his version of the munchies as he would go down on his husband.

It was almost dark; they could just make out the swoop of bats and the cries of the loons. Occasionally a fish would jump. In the distance they could hear an outboard motor. The water lapped on the rocks, thirty feet away.

Justin's hand worked its way under Brian's shirt, confidently stroking up to the nipples. Knowing exactly what pressure, what movements and timing would be best. Brian's arms casually came up around his back. They knew where this was going, they knew there was no hurry, and they both knew that this was the thing they both wanted right now.

When Brian's breathing told him it was time, Justin slid the zipper down, opening the dark pubes to the night air, releasing Brian's cock, hard and ready. His hand stroking, teasing.

A smile in the dark, another kiss and he moved down, taking it in his mouth, suckling. Sliding up and down, his hand joining in the caress before moving down beneath and between, stroking the skin behind the sack, knowing it always brought Brian to the edge in seconds. Tonight was no exception. In seconds Justin was wiping off the excess from his mouth and moving up to share the taste.

On the shore, neither of them noticed Iver watching.

June Part 2

June Pt. 2

The next day Brian reluctantly agreed to leave the laptop unbooted, other than for a single hour of e-mail. It was more than Justin had hoped for.

Taking the outboard, they found the old Indian graveyard Justin remembered, hidden in a tangle of overgrown roots and located on a small uninhabited island on one of the lakes backwaters. It appeared undisturbed from the last time he and Molly had been there. Nearby was the mica mine, really just a large boulder, about the size of a small car heavily veined and flaking. Justin showed him the Narrows and the lock to the Little Rideau, they explored another uninhabited island with a good swimming beach, making love under pine trees, lying atop an old blanket.

Justin was ecstatic, the day was relaxed and romantic and he could finally show Brian some of the places he loved so very much.

When they got back to the house, Brian wandered out to the hammock, a report with him. Justin had stayed in the kitchen to fix himself a second lunch.

As he was about halfway through the thing, he heard footsteps, interrupting his reading.

"Unless you're planning to suck me off, leave me alone to finish this."

"That wasn't my intention, but I can ask Justin to come out here to take care of that, if you'd like."

Startled, Brian looked over to see the elderly man in an ancient tee shirt and a pair of khakis.

"I'm Iver Reese, from down the shore. I take it you're Brian." Brian sat up as they shook hands. "Justin inside?" Brian nodded, still slightly chagrined by his opening remark. "I gather you two are having a rough patch, that right?"

What the fuck had Justin said to this old twat? "We're fine, thank you. What makes you ask?"

"He said that you never stop working and that you take your job more seriously than you do him."

"He said that?" Bullshit.

"Not in so many words." Iver sat on a stump placed for just that purpose. "I've known that boy a lot longer than you have and I know that he wouldn't be up here with you if you didn't mean a whole lot to him, but you don't pay him more attention than you pay to that shit"—he indicated the marketing report beside Brian—"And you'll lose him."

"I think I can handle it."

"You think like that and you're thinking wrong."

Brian was about to answer when they heard the door slam shut. "Iver! I thought I heard you down here." He handed out the cans of beer he'd brought with him, sitting next to Brian on the hammock and kissing his cheek. "Brian this is Iver. He's been up here since the forties. Iver this is my husband, Brian Kinney."

"We introduced ourselves a minute ago—you change your name to Kinney or do one of those stupid hyphenated things?"

Justin laughed, "No. Nothing like that. Is Em with you? I didn't see her when I was over."

This led to a long rundown of where his wife was, how the children and grandchildren were and that the family dog had arthritis. They then moved on to a number of Justin's relatives Brian had never heard of. After about half an hour of this, he got up, took his report and headed up to the house.

"He always like that?"

"He's got a lot on his mind right now." Justin swung his legs up on the hammock, lying down. "We did a lot today, went out in the boat, I showed him some things."

"You keep him headed in that direction. He's the kind who needs to work, but you show him the other side, too." Justin almost burst out laughing, Brian knew all about the other side—Woody's, Babylon, drugs, drinking. You name it; he'd been there. Right now he was focused on work, that was all. It would lighten up in a while.

"He'll be alright."

"...Justin, this is none of my business, but he's your first real love, isn't he?"

"Iver?"

"I know you and when you get your teeth in something you're a bulldog. You won't let go." Justin had an idea what was coming here. "If the time ever comes when you're unhappy more than you're happy. You think about what you're doing."

Justin gave him a hard look, the one he'd learned from Brian. It didn't work as well with his blue eyes, though and Iver knew him too well. "Are you telling me to get a divorce? We've only been married six fucking months."

"Calm down. I'm not telling you anything of the sort. I'm saying to keep your eyes and your options open."

Justin finished off what was left of his beer. "You don't like him."

"I don't know him, but I worry about you. You take care of yourself." They could faintly hear a bell clanging from down the way. "That's dinner. You try to get him to have some fun."

Seeing that Iver was gone, Brian came back outside, joining Justin back in the hammock.

Justin took his hand, lacing their fingers. "Hey, you want to go into town for dinner?"

"...There's a place to eat there?"

"There's a diner. It's not bad. I mean, unless you'd rather stay here. I think I saw that there's a movie playing, too."

"What? Birth of a Nation?"

"Fuck you." Brian pulled him down, wrapping his arms around him and holding him, his mouth nuzzling the side of his neck.

"I know an old joke."

"Oh?"

"There's this guy and he says to his friend that he wants to make love in the worst way. So his friend says..."

"Standing up in a canoe. I think I heard that in about fifth grade."

"No, asshole. 'In a hammock'."

Brian looked up at him as though he was considering the possibility. Just as Justin was expecting Brian to start removing his clothing, or at the very least start groping around beneath the fabric, he stopped.

"Brian?"

"Are you out of your fucking mind? Even if we don't fall out and break some fucking bone, there are mosquitoes, asshole." He started to sit up, obviously intending to leave, go back to the house.

"Since when did you become a Goddamned princess? I thought you liked outdoor sex."

"I'm from the suburbs. Outdoor sex to me is leaving the window open." Brian pulled him up, dragging him into the house.

"What the fuck are you going to do when Gus wants to go camping?"

"Are you kidding? The munchers love that shit. They'll be great at it." They'd gotten as far as the living room.

"Brian, You ever do it in front of a fireplace?"

"Not with you." Justin hit him in the ribs. "OK, there was that time last winter up in Vermont. There was this blond and—shit—he was hot, what could I do?"

"Asshole."

They built up the fire. Even though it was summer, the evenings could still be cool and it felt pretty good—well not as good as having Brian cum inside of him, not as good as wrapping his arms and his legs around that long body and feel it moving on top of him, and not as good as hearing the sounds Brian made only when they were together. There had been enough others for Justin to know even if he had no other reason to think so—he knew that it was different with him for Brian. He knew that, just as it was different for him with Brian than it had been with anyone else.

Ethan—well, Ethan hadn't ever—he couldn't really—there was nothing he did that made Justin forget himself. Even when he was cumming with Ethan, he was fully conscious of what was happening. With Brian, he'd lose track. With Ethan he was aware of how he looked, of the image he wanted to project. With Brian he was himself.

God that felt good.

They were lying together afterwards. The fire had died down and they had taken pillows off the couch to rest against. Dinner was simple cheese and crackers and a bottle of wine.

"Do you really want to start your own agency? Can we afford that?"

"I'm fine."

"Don't give me that crap. It'll cost a shitload of money in startup costs. You'll have to rent a space, you'll have to pay Cynthia, get all the graphics equipment, hire a staff, do all the initial printing—all the letterheads, mailings, all that shit. It'll cost a fortune."

"I've thought it through. I can do this." He poured them both more wine.

"What if Vance insists on a no competition clause of you leaving?"

"He has one already in place. It was a condition of his agreeing to my being a partner."

"Jesus, Brian, that stops you dead."

He sliced off another piece of cheese, placing it between his own lips and transferring it to Justin's. "It only stops me from setting up shop within one hundred miles of Pittsburgh."

Justin turned and looked him full in the face, lit only by the fire. "So where the fuck do you plan to move and are you expecting me to just fucking pick up and follow you like some Goddamned puppy?"

"I'm thinking that I might go to San Francisco to start and then, after I'm established, I'll either move or open a second office in New York."

"Jesus, Brian. If I hadn't asked, when were you going to mention this to me?"

Brian leaned back on both elbows. "I wanted to wait until I saw if it was feasible. I have to know if the clients will move with me, until I now that, I won't know if I can do this."

"...Even if you do, your clients are in Pittsburgh. The steel companies? Brown is just in Chicago, that's a lot closer than to Pittsburgh than the west coast. What are you thinking?"

This was not the way he'd pictured this going. "Justin, it's not like I was going to just present it to you like David did with Mikey. We'll talk about it. I know you have your family and school here."

Goddamn Brian. He always did shit like this. He wanted to open his own place, so he was getting all his fucking ducks in a row. He'd probably already even called a realtor to find someplace appropriate for them to live in San Francisco. There'd be a huge amount of space and there'd be a studio for him and he'd probably even looked at what art schools were there. Shit. Cynthia would have called and gotten catalogues from them by now.

Shit. This was the way it was shaping up. Brian made the decisions, made the money, made the contacts, made him cum whenever he wanted and he was the frigging housewife—like Michael had become for David and later Ben.

Brian was older; Brian was more experienced, Brian was—Brian.

He was just Brian's twat.

He looked at Brian, lost in though for a few seconds then moved over to him, kissing him roughly, aggressively. Brian responded, merely thinking that the victory was too easy and that there would be more before this was settled. He knew that, this was Justin he was dealing with. It was rarely this easy. They made love three more times that night, once more by the fire and then twice in bed. The next morning, after sleeping late, they made love again.

The rest of the trip Justin was, to all appearances, himself, but something had changed in him that night. To call it an epiphany was pretentious, but that's what it was. He understood some things now that he hadn't before and he understood now that he had to set his own limits as to what he would accept rather than merely follow behind Brian.

Brian loved him. That was beyond doubt, just as he loved Brian.

Did Brian consider him his equal? Well, yes, in fact in some areas he did. He was smart and he could hold his own socially better than Brian could. He was almost Brian's equal in bed. He'd had the best as a teacher.

It was the areas where Brian didn't even think to consult him that were the problem.

Brian made the money and, although generous and he had certainly never made an issue of it, he made the money. Neither of them really believed, whatever they might say, that Justin would ever come close to his income.

Money was power.

No, Brian didn't ever use it as such or threaten with it—but Justin knew that the fact was that he was dependent on his husband. Being dependant infantilized him. He would change this as soon as possible. He would concentrate on graphic design instead of fine art. He would be come employable.

Yes, he knew that this was important to Brian, this move for independence and he would support it as far as he could—without hurting himself.

He and Brian would finish the vacation. Brian had promised to minimize the work. When they got home they may not know yet if Brian could make a break from Vanguard, but they would know more than they did now. At the very least, Brian wanted a promotion to Senior Partner and a substantial raise.

They would know about the move or the promotion in a couple of months after Brian finished his maneuvering.

Until then, they still had a week more here at the house. Justin would show him the back meadow where they could make love, they could go into town for fireworks to bring back to Molly, they could have dinner with Iver and Em, and they would relax.

The rest of the trip would be fine. They would relax rest up.

The next couple of months would be fucking interesting, though.