Setting: middle fourth season, Justin knows about the cancer and the chemo, Brian's gotten used to his knowing. Kind of. Before any discussion of the Liberty Ride.
There are plenty of nights when Brian wakes up six or seven times before the break of dawn. Most of the time he just lies motionless in bed, hating the sound of his skin moving against the cotton and the idea of Justin waking up and asking if he's alright. But sometimes he gets up and sprawls out on the couch and smokes a stupid cigarette that will keep him up longer then he would have been if he hadn't smoked it.
He feels a vague discomfort; a detached, nauseous uncertain feeling that makes him question if it's the chemo or if it's all in his head. He can not point to where it hurts. He imagines his body as a diagram. The question "Where does it hurt?" hovers above him and surrounding him completely is the circle of a doctor's red pen.
But then he takes another drag and zeros the smoke into this lungs for no reason and feels just like he did yesterday and the day before. Feels light. His view widens and his eyes adjust to the darkness of his loft. The headache throbs dully in and out and he forgets about it.
Then he sees the rise of Justin's sleeping body in the bed. There is a dramatically poetic shock of blonde hair laying against the dark blue pillow. It's a thoughtless image, throwaway, careless, with no knowledge of its absurd, immense power.
And for a few moments Brian thinks that maybe it could always be like this; with Justin in his house, in his bed. He believes that it wouldn't take that much to hang on to; a few little words that didn't have to mean what everyone else thought they did. In fact, they could make it mean something totally separate; something better.
He's got to organize, he thinks. He's got to sit down and try to sort it all out in his head, and he thinks that he should probably do it sometime soon. Sometime now, he thinks, but he can't. He just doesn't have the energy. The task seems huge and insurmountable; this boy, this pale, golden thing with his dramatic color and his malicious beauty. Brian just doesn't know where he fits. He keeps looking; at times like this, he looks desperately, with need and anticipation. But he's never found a place. He doesn't know how he can have this and still be himself; this huge happiness that is wonderful and desperately frightening and that just doesn't fit.
The secret yearnings he experiences at two in the morning can never feel the warm realness of the daytime. If he lets himself feel things like this when he's awake, when he's with Michael or Theodore or someone at work, then it becomes beyond ignoring. It's easy enough during the day to just say that they're happy, their having a good time, shacking up and fucking every night.
But at night he can indulge in this brief, masturbatory exercise. Justin in his bed, in his loft, in his life. Static permanence. Stability, station, certainty, constancy.
Anyway, sometimes he allows himself to believe that this could be the way it always is.
But Brian Kinney has never found happiness in immobility. His whole life he's run from things to make himself happy; from his father, his house. Even Mikey requires a certain amount of movement; Brian's always got to be a step or two in front, so that Michael can follow.
But here is this boy who wants him to be just exactly as he is; just exactly at rest. Brian doesn't have to run for Justin; Justin doesn't want to lead, and he doesn't need to follow. Justin wants to just be here, as they are. The concept it staggering.
Brian marvels at the extreme stillness of the boy. At his slow, accepting, blissful understanding of what he wants. At his willingness to wait.
But, of course, it's not that easy. Brian knows that no one can wait forever. Not like Justin waits: fumbling, floating around in Brian's limbo. He sleeps at the loft, but it's not his home. He fucks Brian every night, but he's not his boyfriend. Justin is a homeless, nameless thing for Brian, orphan-like and wayward.
The fact that there's a warm bed to come back to doesn't change the fundamentals of abandonment.
Brian watches the boy in his bed and sees the strange, transparent loneliness of his existence. And of his own.
Perhaps there's a place for him after all.