nanowrenlet (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
nanowrenlet) wrote2003-11-26 11:28 pm
nanowrenlet) wrote2003-11-26 11:28 pm
(no subject)
[Note: Just re-iterating the userinfo here: raw, unbetaed, potentially crappy fic ahead. Bring a hanky.]
Justin thought he that he should know all of Rube's moods by now, especially the ones that involved him being upset since Justin was the most frequent target of those, but this was a new one. He looked... grim was the only word for it, and Justin quashed the urge to indulge in silly 'grim reaper' puns because there seemed to be a fair amount of pissed off involved, there, too. But it wasn't directed at any of the reapers and Justin was relieved at that because even though he -had- been good lately, sometimes with Rube you just didn't know. He expected to get -some- clue, though, mention of another mix-up or the reaper version of overtime, anything. But Rube said nothing out of the ordinary. In fact, he said very little at all, simply passed out the assignments and slammed his planner shut.
But not before Justin saw something that made his blood run bitterly cold. He jerked forward and pressed his hand over Rube's, on top of the planner, and looked up at the other reaper.
"Let me see it."
"No."
"Rube!"
"Justin." Rube met his eyes, and he was as serious and solemn as Justin had ever seen him. "Leave this alone." Then he pulled his hand out from under Justin's and tucked his planner away, and got up to leave.
Justin was shaking his head, still stunned. "Fuck. Fuck." He bolted out of the booth, and Rube or one of the other reapers might have called out after him as he tore out the door but he just didn't fucking care.
There had been one more Post-It in Rube's planner, and the name on it was B. Kinney.
Justin was six blocks away before the urge to run drained out of him, and he stopped and bent over, bracing his hands on his knees and praying he wouldn't puke. Brian. Brian was going to die, and Justin didn't know where and didn't know when, though when he thought about it he was fairly sure he'd seen a "P.M." on the ETD before Rube had shut it away. Pretty sure. Almost one hundred percent sure, and that meant that he had time. Time enough to find Brian, hopefully, to -see- Brian, and maybe... Justin straightened, and checked the yellow square he had crumpled into the palm of his hand as he ran out of the restaurant. He had a morning appointment, and it wasn't far away. That was good, because like it or not Justin still had responsibilities, and he'd be fucked before he gave Rube another excuse to be royally pissed at him that day. And then he could try to figure out how to be there for Brian's death without knowing when or where or how it was going to happen. And -then-... he'd badger the fuck out of Rube until he told Justin where and who to lodge a formal complaint with, because scheduling Brian to die today, of all days? Was just fucking -unfair-.
In the end, Justin settled on a tried and true method of being a part of Brian's death, in much the same way he'd made himself a part of the man's life in the first place: he stalked him.
He started just after his appointment with a quick trip to Brian's loft, on the off chance he might have taken the day off of work and stayed home, but no such luck. The windows were dark, which didn't mean that much, but his Jeep was gone and that did. Brian could be -anywhere- by now, the gym, or the baths, or any one of a dozen other places he'd mentioned and Justin was sort of running out of time, but he figured he should rule out some of the obvious answers first and that meant going by Brian's office.
Justin knew where Brian worked, of course. The name on the door had changed, which gave him a quick flash of panic until he thought to check the wall directory and saw that Brian's name was still on it. He was listed higher than he used to be, and Justin thought proudly that all Brian's long hours must be paying off, and he smiled politely at the receptionist and inquired whether Mr. Kinney was in the office that day. She nodded yes, but said that he was quite busy and asked whether Justin had an appointment? Justin didn't, of course, so he made his excuses and picked up a business card and said he would call to schedule one. He scanned the front office for Rube and sighed when he didn't see him, and then fidgeted in the elevator all the way down to the lobby worrying that Rube was riding up in the other bank of elevators right that very moment and he'd miss it, he'd miss everything.
It was fucking nerve-wracking, and he wondered how he had ever pulled this off before without turning into a complete wreck. Well, that was an easy enough answer to find once he thought about it; the first time he had stalked Brian there hadn't been anything so big as a death on the line, just the question of whether or not he could get Brian to fuck him again. It had seemed pretty big at the time, but now... not so much. Justin couldn't rationally explain why -this- was so vital to him now, but it very much was; trying to be there for Brian's death felt like the most important thing Justin would ever, ever do.
Rube wasn't in the lobby of the building, either. Justin pushed through the revolving door and stopped on the sidewalk, trying to figure out what to do next. Well, he was going to wait, obviously, only where? He needed a spot where he could see the door, and the exit to the parking structure, and fuck, part of the side street too in case there was an ambulance, which he didn't want to think about, -wouldn't- think about right then.
Instead, Justin thought about where to wait. And then he thought about what he'd do if Brian left in his Jeep, because contrary to what all the movies claimed, taxi drivers did not react well when you jumped in and yelled, "Follow that car!" Even if you did throw wads of money at them. Justin intended to fucking well try if he had to, though, and if it meant he paid out every bit of the cash he had in his pocket and didn't make rent that month, so be it.
Once he'd found a vantage point, he checked his watch and wondered how long he'd have to wait, and -that- was when it finally occurred to him that he'd left his messenger bag, sketchbook and all, behind him when he'd bolted from the restaurant. Well, fuck. Rube would have picked it up, probably, or asked one of the other reapers to do it, Justin was sure he'd get everything back. He just didn't have it -now-, although, now that he considered it, that was probably a good thing. It would suck to go to all this trouble only to have Brian drive right past him while he was eyebrows-deep in a sketch.
Justin was just going to have to sit there and wait. And smoke. A lot. His luck was holding so far, though, because he still had half a pack left when he spotted, not Rube going into the building as he'd expected, but Brian coming out of it, and on foot. And he didn't hail a cab, either, but turned and started to walk down the sidewalk, right towards where Justin was waiting and watching.
God, Brian was still so fucking beautiful that it made him hurt. Justin hadn't really seen him in months, not since that afternoon at the church, so he took a good, long look at Brian as he walked towards Justin, and then past where he waited, and continued on with the flow of people on the sidewalk. There were changes in Brian, visible ones if you knew what you were looking at, and Justin saw them and noted them and drank them into himself. He had always wondered if maybe that was one of the things that had drawn Brian to Justin, that Justin saw him as he was and not as he'd been in high school when Michael met him, or in college when Lindsay did. Not that it mattered anymore, it was just something Justin thought about sometimes.
Brian was as impeccably dressed as always, in a suit that Justin thought had to be new, but he'd never known enough about the designers Brian favored to tell one from another. He looked thinner, mostly around his cheeks and the line of his jaw, but not gaunt like he had in the first few months after Justin's death. There were shadows in his eyes, and he no longer walked like he owned the fucking world and everyone else just lived in it. Brian was another year older now, and in a way he actually looked his age. Not as if his anti-wrinkle creams and whatnot had suddenly failed him, he didn't look -old-, more like....
Brian looked like a man who had seen thirty-one years of life, and finally understood the ways in which it could twist you apart and -hurt- you, even as you tried to claim that it had no such power. And Justin recognized the signs of it so easily in Brian because he had seen them first in himself.
Justin ground out his cigarette, pushed away from the wall and followed in Brian's wake as he cut through the crowd.
They walked for what felt like forever, Justin didn't think he'd ever seen Brian walk so much other than on a treadmill. He wondered if this was a new habit of Brian's, something the usual gossip channels hadn't picked up on, but then he saw the hotel in the next block down and thought maybe he understood why they'd been walking all this way. There was no parking on this street or the blocks surrounding it, and he didn't think Brian would ever willingly enter that particular parking garage again, any more than Justin would himself.
Justin wasn't sure why they were there at all, when Brian slowed and finally made his way around the long curved driveway to the hotel entrance. Maybe Brian had a late luncheon meeting here, or... God, he didn't know. Justin simply did not know. But he still followed.
Half the hotel lobby was draped in plastic sheeting, and there were signs placed in strategic locations, color-coordinated to match the decor and cutely worded, 'Pardon Our Dust,' that sort of thing. Justin didn't pay them much mind. He saw Brian head down the hallway towards the banqueting rooms and thought maybe he'd been right, Brian had a meeting here and it had nothing to do with his death, nothing at all, when he heard someone call his name.
"Justin. You shouldn't be here." Rube was leaning against a planter, and he still looked just as grim as he had that morning.
Justin straightened his shoulders and faced him. "Well I think this is exactly where I should be. Look, I'm not trying to stop you, or him, or anything. I know better. I just... I just had to see him again. I want to be here when he goes, can you at least let me have that much?"
Rube sucked in a long breath, and shook his head. "I'm not sure that's such a good idea, kiddo. But, since you're already here... I guess I can't stop you, can I." It wasn't really a question, and Rube's mouth twisted to the side as he added, "You want to help me find him?"
"Yeah, he went down towards...." Justin turned and scanned the directory at the entrance to the carpeted hallway. He hadn't recognized it from this side, there was direct access from a second lobby in the garage, but the last room listed was 'Ballroom.' He swallowed, and was vaguely surprised at how steady his voice sounded as he told Rube, "I think I know where he is."
Rube followed Justin down the hallway, past rooms named after presidents and planets, and halfway down the hall on the left they spotted Brian standing in front of a set of closed double doors. He was just standing there looking at the doors, next to a placard that declared that this room, too, was undergoing renovations, and Justin got a sour feeling in the pit of his stomach. "Rube, this is so not fair."
Rube shot him a sympathetic look, and he stepped forward and cleared his throat to get Brian's attention. "Excuse me, sir? Do you happen to know if the Constellation Room is in this wing?"
"Hmm?" Brian's brow furrowed, like maybe he wondered where this guy had come from, but wrote it off to distraction. "Yeah, I think it might be further down the hall."
"Well, I guess I'll go see for myself, then, thank you." Rube smiled at him and patted his shoulder, and Justin watched the golden lights swirl across the fabric of Brian's jacket in the wake of Rube's hand and bit his lip.
Rube ambled a couple of yards down the hallway before he stopped and turned around. Both reapers waited, silently, as Brian finally came to some kind of decision and tried the handle of one of the doors. It wasn't locked. It swung open easily, as a matter of fact, revealing more of the plastic sheeting hanging down off the door frame. Brian laid his fingertips lightly on the material, then brushed it aside with the back of his hand and stepped through the door.
Rube and Justin's eyes met. "You could skip the messy part, if you wanted."
"I'm not skipping anything." Justin pushed the plastic aside and followed Brian, and after a moment he heard the rustle of plastic that told him that Rube had followed, too.
The work crew must have either taken a break or taken the day off, because the only living creature in the room was Brian. Most of the lights were off, but Justin could tell that part of the dance floor had been torn up and they must have been doing something to the ceiling too by the way the walls were latticed with scaffolding and there were piles of acoustic tile and sheet rock and other things just everywhere. Brian had stopped again, staring towards the center of the room and Justin wondered what it had looked like that night, to Brian, looking out from here into a room full of fucking teenagers in dress-up clothes, and spotting Justin and Daphne on the dance floor.
Rube's voice was so low it was practically a whisper. "I would've thought he'd go, you know," Rube sort of nodded back towards the secondary lobby with his head.
Justin shook his head. "We danced. Before everything else happened that night, we danced here. We were really happy."
Rube just nodded, and it occurred to Justin to wonder why Brian had come here now, leaving his office in the middle of the day the way he had and all, and then he realized that after the fiasco the night of Gus' birthday, Michael and the rest of the family would be all over Brian like white on rice today. Someone was probably scheduled to meet Brian at the door of his office at five on the dot whether he snarled about it or not, so if he wanted any time to himself at all, to remember or whatever, he had to sneak away to take it, like this. And that made Justin fidget, guilty at the thought that Brian -still- didn't have any damned privacy, and he was just drawing breath to ask Rube if he'd leave for a minute when it happened; Brian moved to step over a pile of planks and laid his hand on a scaffolding strut for balance, and the whole thing rattled alarmingly and came down right on top of him. Justin watched it all, every second.
"Well, fuck." Brian stood with his hands in his pockets, staring down at the mess. He tried to nudge his leg with a toe, and his eyebrows shot up when his Prada-clad foot passed right through it with a faint whoosh.
Rube patted Justin's shoulder and stepped up to stand next to Brian. "That about sums it up. How're you feeling?"
Brian snorted. "Like shit, how the fuck else am I supposed to feel? I'm fucking dead." And that was just so like Brian, Justin had to clap a hand over his mouth to stifle a possibly-hysterical giggle, only he must not have stifled it too well because Brian's head came up and he spotted Justin.
He looked annoyed at first, Brian had never liked being laughed at, but then his face sort of... shifted, like he was trying to see something more clearly but that just wasn't possible, was it? And then he -smiled- and called out, "Justin??"
Justin shot Rube a startled look, he had -not- expected Brian to recognize him, but the secretive jerk just shrugged and smiled a little, like he'd known all along that this might happen but he hadn't wanted to get Justin's hopes up. Justin guessed he could forgive him, because Brian was still smiling and had crossed the distance between them in three long steps but fuck, Justin couldn't make his voice work.
"It -is- you?" Brian lifted a hand like he was reaching for Justin's face, and remembered almost too late that he couldn't touch him. Only he didn't know what Justin knew, that there were limits on how much the dead could interact with the world but reapers could do a bit more if they chose. Justin swallowed and nodded his answer to Brian's question, and met Brian's hand with his own, palm to palm.
Brian sucked in a breath and pulled Justin into him, hugging him so hard that Justin came up on his toes and he thought he heard his ribs creak. He didn't care if Brian -broke- his fucking ribs, and he was hugging back just as hard and trying not to hyperventilate.
"Oh God, Justin... what did you do, come back for me?"
"No, I- I've been here, sort of."
Brian let go just enough that he could look down at Justin again, and he brushed a bit of Justin's bangs aside. "Your hair's grown." His voice was so quiet, so tender that it made Justin choke up again and that sort of sucked, because he had a million things he wanted to say to Brian and he could only manage to smile and nod again, and watch as Brian's eyes tracked the changes in him and his mind started to fit the pieces together.
"That was really you, wasn't it, at Boytoy? -You- took me home that night."
"Yeah." It came out hiccup-y, like his voice wasn't sure if he was fixing to laugh or cry, and Justin sort of thought it would be okay to do some of both.
Brian laughed softly, thumbed away a tear and nosed at the hair at Justin's temple, murmuring, "You sneaky little shit." But he didn't sound pissed at all, more like... proud, and then he was kissing Justin so Justin kissed him back, and thought that his perfect, beautiful moment would probably have to somehow involve Brian's lips and Brian's arms. Rube cleared his throat pointedly, but they ignored him.
"Ah... hate to break this up, kiddo, but Brian's got places to be that aren't here."
That, he couldn't ignore. He broke from Brian's kiss reluctantly, and tried to quash the little thrill in his heart when Brian's arm came up around his shoulders and tightened protectively. "I know, Rube."
Brian looked from one reaper to the other, obviously confused. "Aren't you coming with me?"
"He can't do that, Brian. The last leg of this journey you've got to make on your own."
He looked at Justin again, and Justin nodded sadly. "He's right. I can't go."
Brian stepped back a little, took Justin's shoulders in his hands and stared down at him, suddenly serious. "Tell me why."
"Because," Justin straightened and met Brian's eyes squarely. "Because I'm a reaper, and that's what we do. It's not... I didn't choose it or anything, it just happens. Sometimes when people die, they have to stay behind and help other souls get where they're supposed to be when -they- die. I've been doing it all year." He bit his lip and added, weakly. "I have to stay."
"You don't look happy about it."
"I'm... okay." And it was a lie, Justin hadn't really been okay since he'd died and God, how could he -lie- to Brian like this? The answer was that he couldn't, because Brian saw right through Justin's pretenses like he always had. Brian was studying his face, and Justin wondered how much of the last year and how much of Justin's pain he could read there but Brian didn't say, he didn't say anything at all. He just nodded once, in that way he always had when Justin made a decision Brian didn't like, but he was going to accept it anyway.
There was a light overhead suddenly, out in the middle of the room, from somewhere over the dance floor. It was time. Justin took a deep breath and said, "I'll walk with you as far as I can."
Brian nodded again, and breathed like he wanted to say something more but he didn't. He leaned forward and gently kissed Justin's forehead, let his arm slide down Justin's until their hands were clasped together, and led him forward. Justin turned briefly to Rube, praying that the other reaper wouldn't object, but he just nodded a little and waved them on.
Brian ghosted through the pile of debris in their path and carefully helped Justin climb around it as well. They were almost there, and right at the edge of the light Brian stopped and turned to face Justin again, taking both of his hands.
"So this is it."
"Yeah."
"Don't suppose you know where I'm going."
"No... none of us do." Justin chewed his lip, and he knew his palms were sweating against Brian's.
Brian dropped his eyes for a moment, and when he raised them again there was so much sadness, so much of Justin's own loneliness reflected in them that his breath caught. "Don't suppose you know when your turn will be, either."
Justin just shook his head mutely. Brian glanced back over his shoulder and then looked at Justin again, smiling softly. "Are you sure you won't come? They're playing our song."
Justin looked over Brian's shoulder at the growing light, and gasped.
It wasn't just a light from above, it was a -spotlight-, their blue-gelled spotlight and now that Brian had mentioned it, Justin could hear the music, too. And Justin knew then that -this- was Brian's moment, his beautiful place, and that it would have been Justin's as well. If he had died completely dead in the garage below, if he had been called to the other side instead of being made to stay behind in this half-life, the one thing that could have taken him from Brian's side would have been the chance to come back to this moment and dance in Brian's arms again.
--
Rube knew the moment Justin made his decision, it was written all over him, but he still had to try one last time. "You can't do this, kiddo. You can't go where he's going. Come on, let him go and I'll take you home."
But Brian was already backing towards the dance floor, holding Justin's hand in his and tugging gently. Justin paused long enough to look back at Rube and he smiled, the widest, truest smile Rube had ever seen on his face.
"I'm going with him."
Rube shook his head. The kid had no idea what he was getting into; then again, Rube didn't really know either. "Justin, don't!" But Justin didn't hear him. They were already inside, and as the light grew brighter Brian said something into Justin's ear that made him laugh, and Justin spun into his lover's arms and they began to dance. The light grew and grew until the two men inside it were nothing but light themselves, and Rube thought maybe he heard music just before the thunderclap that shook the ground under Rube's feet and left the rest of the hotel undisturbed. And they were both gone.
[4219/49115]
Justin thought he that he should know all of Rube's moods by now, especially the ones that involved him being upset since Justin was the most frequent target of those, but this was a new one. He looked... grim was the only word for it, and Justin quashed the urge to indulge in silly 'grim reaper' puns because there seemed to be a fair amount of pissed off involved, there, too. But it wasn't directed at any of the reapers and Justin was relieved at that because even though he -had- been good lately, sometimes with Rube you just didn't know. He expected to get -some- clue, though, mention of another mix-up or the reaper version of overtime, anything. But Rube said nothing out of the ordinary. In fact, he said very little at all, simply passed out the assignments and slammed his planner shut.
But not before Justin saw something that made his blood run bitterly cold. He jerked forward and pressed his hand over Rube's, on top of the planner, and looked up at the other reaper.
"Let me see it."
"No."
"Rube!"
"Justin." Rube met his eyes, and he was as serious and solemn as Justin had ever seen him. "Leave this alone." Then he pulled his hand out from under Justin's and tucked his planner away, and got up to leave.
Justin was shaking his head, still stunned. "Fuck. Fuck." He bolted out of the booth, and Rube or one of the other reapers might have called out after him as he tore out the door but he just didn't fucking care.
There had been one more Post-It in Rube's planner, and the name on it was B. Kinney.
Justin was six blocks away before the urge to run drained out of him, and he stopped and bent over, bracing his hands on his knees and praying he wouldn't puke. Brian. Brian was going to die, and Justin didn't know where and didn't know when, though when he thought about it he was fairly sure he'd seen a "P.M." on the ETD before Rube had shut it away. Pretty sure. Almost one hundred percent sure, and that meant that he had time. Time enough to find Brian, hopefully, to -see- Brian, and maybe... Justin straightened, and checked the yellow square he had crumpled into the palm of his hand as he ran out of the restaurant. He had a morning appointment, and it wasn't far away. That was good, because like it or not Justin still had responsibilities, and he'd be fucked before he gave Rube another excuse to be royally pissed at him that day. And then he could try to figure out how to be there for Brian's death without knowing when or where or how it was going to happen. And -then-... he'd badger the fuck out of Rube until he told Justin where and who to lodge a formal complaint with, because scheduling Brian to die today, of all days? Was just fucking -unfair-.
In the end, Justin settled on a tried and true method of being a part of Brian's death, in much the same way he'd made himself a part of the man's life in the first place: he stalked him.
He started just after his appointment with a quick trip to Brian's loft, on the off chance he might have taken the day off of work and stayed home, but no such luck. The windows were dark, which didn't mean that much, but his Jeep was gone and that did. Brian could be -anywhere- by now, the gym, or the baths, or any one of a dozen other places he'd mentioned and Justin was sort of running out of time, but he figured he should rule out some of the obvious answers first and that meant going by Brian's office.
Justin knew where Brian worked, of course. The name on the door had changed, which gave him a quick flash of panic until he thought to check the wall directory and saw that Brian's name was still on it. He was listed higher than he used to be, and Justin thought proudly that all Brian's long hours must be paying off, and he smiled politely at the receptionist and inquired whether Mr. Kinney was in the office that day. She nodded yes, but said that he was quite busy and asked whether Justin had an appointment? Justin didn't, of course, so he made his excuses and picked up a business card and said he would call to schedule one. He scanned the front office for Rube and sighed when he didn't see him, and then fidgeted in the elevator all the way down to the lobby worrying that Rube was riding up in the other bank of elevators right that very moment and he'd miss it, he'd miss everything.
It was fucking nerve-wracking, and he wondered how he had ever pulled this off before without turning into a complete wreck. Well, that was an easy enough answer to find once he thought about it; the first time he had stalked Brian there hadn't been anything so big as a death on the line, just the question of whether or not he could get Brian to fuck him again. It had seemed pretty big at the time, but now... not so much. Justin couldn't rationally explain why -this- was so vital to him now, but it very much was; trying to be there for Brian's death felt like the most important thing Justin would ever, ever do.
Rube wasn't in the lobby of the building, either. Justin pushed through the revolving door and stopped on the sidewalk, trying to figure out what to do next. Well, he was going to wait, obviously, only where? He needed a spot where he could see the door, and the exit to the parking structure, and fuck, part of the side street too in case there was an ambulance, which he didn't want to think about, -wouldn't- think about right then.
Instead, Justin thought about where to wait. And then he thought about what he'd do if Brian left in his Jeep, because contrary to what all the movies claimed, taxi drivers did not react well when you jumped in and yelled, "Follow that car!" Even if you did throw wads of money at them. Justin intended to fucking well try if he had to, though, and if it meant he paid out every bit of the cash he had in his pocket and didn't make rent that month, so be it.
Once he'd found a vantage point, he checked his watch and wondered how long he'd have to wait, and -that- was when it finally occurred to him that he'd left his messenger bag, sketchbook and all, behind him when he'd bolted from the restaurant. Well, fuck. Rube would have picked it up, probably, or asked one of the other reapers to do it, Justin was sure he'd get everything back. He just didn't have it -now-, although, now that he considered it, that was probably a good thing. It would suck to go to all this trouble only to have Brian drive right past him while he was eyebrows-deep in a sketch.
Justin was just going to have to sit there and wait. And smoke. A lot. His luck was holding so far, though, because he still had half a pack left when he spotted, not Rube going into the building as he'd expected, but Brian coming out of it, and on foot. And he didn't hail a cab, either, but turned and started to walk down the sidewalk, right towards where Justin was waiting and watching.
God, Brian was still so fucking beautiful that it made him hurt. Justin hadn't really seen him in months, not since that afternoon at the church, so he took a good, long look at Brian as he walked towards Justin, and then past where he waited, and continued on with the flow of people on the sidewalk. There were changes in Brian, visible ones if you knew what you were looking at, and Justin saw them and noted them and drank them into himself. He had always wondered if maybe that was one of the things that had drawn Brian to Justin, that Justin saw him as he was and not as he'd been in high school when Michael met him, or in college when Lindsay did. Not that it mattered anymore, it was just something Justin thought about sometimes.
Brian was as impeccably dressed as always, in a suit that Justin thought had to be new, but he'd never known enough about the designers Brian favored to tell one from another. He looked thinner, mostly around his cheeks and the line of his jaw, but not gaunt like he had in the first few months after Justin's death. There were shadows in his eyes, and he no longer walked like he owned the fucking world and everyone else just lived in it. Brian was another year older now, and in a way he actually looked his age. Not as if his anti-wrinkle creams and whatnot had suddenly failed him, he didn't look -old-, more like....
Brian looked like a man who had seen thirty-one years of life, and finally understood the ways in which it could twist you apart and -hurt- you, even as you tried to claim that it had no such power. And Justin recognized the signs of it so easily in Brian because he had seen them first in himself.
Justin ground out his cigarette, pushed away from the wall and followed in Brian's wake as he cut through the crowd.
They walked for what felt like forever, Justin didn't think he'd ever seen Brian walk so much other than on a treadmill. He wondered if this was a new habit of Brian's, something the usual gossip channels hadn't picked up on, but then he saw the hotel in the next block down and thought maybe he understood why they'd been walking all this way. There was no parking on this street or the blocks surrounding it, and he didn't think Brian would ever willingly enter that particular parking garage again, any more than Justin would himself.
Justin wasn't sure why they were there at all, when Brian slowed and finally made his way around the long curved driveway to the hotel entrance. Maybe Brian had a late luncheon meeting here, or... God, he didn't know. Justin simply did not know. But he still followed.
Half the hotel lobby was draped in plastic sheeting, and there were signs placed in strategic locations, color-coordinated to match the decor and cutely worded, 'Pardon Our Dust,' that sort of thing. Justin didn't pay them much mind. He saw Brian head down the hallway towards the banqueting rooms and thought maybe he'd been right, Brian had a meeting here and it had nothing to do with his death, nothing at all, when he heard someone call his name.
"Justin. You shouldn't be here." Rube was leaning against a planter, and he still looked just as grim as he had that morning.
Justin straightened his shoulders and faced him. "Well I think this is exactly where I should be. Look, I'm not trying to stop you, or him, or anything. I know better. I just... I just had to see him again. I want to be here when he goes, can you at least let me have that much?"
Rube sucked in a long breath, and shook his head. "I'm not sure that's such a good idea, kiddo. But, since you're already here... I guess I can't stop you, can I." It wasn't really a question, and Rube's mouth twisted to the side as he added, "You want to help me find him?"
"Yeah, he went down towards...." Justin turned and scanned the directory at the entrance to the carpeted hallway. He hadn't recognized it from this side, there was direct access from a second lobby in the garage, but the last room listed was 'Ballroom.' He swallowed, and was vaguely surprised at how steady his voice sounded as he told Rube, "I think I know where he is."
Rube followed Justin down the hallway, past rooms named after presidents and planets, and halfway down the hall on the left they spotted Brian standing in front of a set of closed double doors. He was just standing there looking at the doors, next to a placard that declared that this room, too, was undergoing renovations, and Justin got a sour feeling in the pit of his stomach. "Rube, this is so not fair."
Rube shot him a sympathetic look, and he stepped forward and cleared his throat to get Brian's attention. "Excuse me, sir? Do you happen to know if the Constellation Room is in this wing?"
"Hmm?" Brian's brow furrowed, like maybe he wondered where this guy had come from, but wrote it off to distraction. "Yeah, I think it might be further down the hall."
"Well, I guess I'll go see for myself, then, thank you." Rube smiled at him and patted his shoulder, and Justin watched the golden lights swirl across the fabric of Brian's jacket in the wake of Rube's hand and bit his lip.
Rube ambled a couple of yards down the hallway before he stopped and turned around. Both reapers waited, silently, as Brian finally came to some kind of decision and tried the handle of one of the doors. It wasn't locked. It swung open easily, as a matter of fact, revealing more of the plastic sheeting hanging down off the door frame. Brian laid his fingertips lightly on the material, then brushed it aside with the back of his hand and stepped through the door.
Rube and Justin's eyes met. "You could skip the messy part, if you wanted."
"I'm not skipping anything." Justin pushed the plastic aside and followed Brian, and after a moment he heard the rustle of plastic that told him that Rube had followed, too.
The work crew must have either taken a break or taken the day off, because the only living creature in the room was Brian. Most of the lights were off, but Justin could tell that part of the dance floor had been torn up and they must have been doing something to the ceiling too by the way the walls were latticed with scaffolding and there were piles of acoustic tile and sheet rock and other things just everywhere. Brian had stopped again, staring towards the center of the room and Justin wondered what it had looked like that night, to Brian, looking out from here into a room full of fucking teenagers in dress-up clothes, and spotting Justin and Daphne on the dance floor.
Rube's voice was so low it was practically a whisper. "I would've thought he'd go, you know," Rube sort of nodded back towards the secondary lobby with his head.
Justin shook his head. "We danced. Before everything else happened that night, we danced here. We were really happy."
Rube just nodded, and it occurred to Justin to wonder why Brian had come here now, leaving his office in the middle of the day the way he had and all, and then he realized that after the fiasco the night of Gus' birthday, Michael and the rest of the family would be all over Brian like white on rice today. Someone was probably scheduled to meet Brian at the door of his office at five on the dot whether he snarled about it or not, so if he wanted any time to himself at all, to remember or whatever, he had to sneak away to take it, like this. And that made Justin fidget, guilty at the thought that Brian -still- didn't have any damned privacy, and he was just drawing breath to ask Rube if he'd leave for a minute when it happened; Brian moved to step over a pile of planks and laid his hand on a scaffolding strut for balance, and the whole thing rattled alarmingly and came down right on top of him. Justin watched it all, every second.
"Well, fuck." Brian stood with his hands in his pockets, staring down at the mess. He tried to nudge his leg with a toe, and his eyebrows shot up when his Prada-clad foot passed right through it with a faint whoosh.
Rube patted Justin's shoulder and stepped up to stand next to Brian. "That about sums it up. How're you feeling?"
Brian snorted. "Like shit, how the fuck else am I supposed to feel? I'm fucking dead." And that was just so like Brian, Justin had to clap a hand over his mouth to stifle a possibly-hysterical giggle, only he must not have stifled it too well because Brian's head came up and he spotted Justin.
He looked annoyed at first, Brian had never liked being laughed at, but then his face sort of... shifted, like he was trying to see something more clearly but that just wasn't possible, was it? And then he -smiled- and called out, "Justin??"
Justin shot Rube a startled look, he had -not- expected Brian to recognize him, but the secretive jerk just shrugged and smiled a little, like he'd known all along that this might happen but he hadn't wanted to get Justin's hopes up. Justin guessed he could forgive him, because Brian was still smiling and had crossed the distance between them in three long steps but fuck, Justin couldn't make his voice work.
"It -is- you?" Brian lifted a hand like he was reaching for Justin's face, and remembered almost too late that he couldn't touch him. Only he didn't know what Justin knew, that there were limits on how much the dead could interact with the world but reapers could do a bit more if they chose. Justin swallowed and nodded his answer to Brian's question, and met Brian's hand with his own, palm to palm.
Brian sucked in a breath and pulled Justin into him, hugging him so hard that Justin came up on his toes and he thought he heard his ribs creak. He didn't care if Brian -broke- his fucking ribs, and he was hugging back just as hard and trying not to hyperventilate.
"Oh God, Justin... what did you do, come back for me?"
"No, I- I've been here, sort of."
Brian let go just enough that he could look down at Justin again, and he brushed a bit of Justin's bangs aside. "Your hair's grown." His voice was so quiet, so tender that it made Justin choke up again and that sort of sucked, because he had a million things he wanted to say to Brian and he could only manage to smile and nod again, and watch as Brian's eyes tracked the changes in him and his mind started to fit the pieces together.
"That was really you, wasn't it, at Boytoy? -You- took me home that night."
"Yeah." It came out hiccup-y, like his voice wasn't sure if he was fixing to laugh or cry, and Justin sort of thought it would be okay to do some of both.
Brian laughed softly, thumbed away a tear and nosed at the hair at Justin's temple, murmuring, "You sneaky little shit." But he didn't sound pissed at all, more like... proud, and then he was kissing Justin so Justin kissed him back, and thought that his perfect, beautiful moment would probably have to somehow involve Brian's lips and Brian's arms. Rube cleared his throat pointedly, but they ignored him.
"Ah... hate to break this up, kiddo, but Brian's got places to be that aren't here."
That, he couldn't ignore. He broke from Brian's kiss reluctantly, and tried to quash the little thrill in his heart when Brian's arm came up around his shoulders and tightened protectively. "I know, Rube."
Brian looked from one reaper to the other, obviously confused. "Aren't you coming with me?"
"He can't do that, Brian. The last leg of this journey you've got to make on your own."
He looked at Justin again, and Justin nodded sadly. "He's right. I can't go."
Brian stepped back a little, took Justin's shoulders in his hands and stared down at him, suddenly serious. "Tell me why."
"Because," Justin straightened and met Brian's eyes squarely. "Because I'm a reaper, and that's what we do. It's not... I didn't choose it or anything, it just happens. Sometimes when people die, they have to stay behind and help other souls get where they're supposed to be when -they- die. I've been doing it all year." He bit his lip and added, weakly. "I have to stay."
"You don't look happy about it."
"I'm... okay." And it was a lie, Justin hadn't really been okay since he'd died and God, how could he -lie- to Brian like this? The answer was that he couldn't, because Brian saw right through Justin's pretenses like he always had. Brian was studying his face, and Justin wondered how much of the last year and how much of Justin's pain he could read there but Brian didn't say, he didn't say anything at all. He just nodded once, in that way he always had when Justin made a decision Brian didn't like, but he was going to accept it anyway.
There was a light overhead suddenly, out in the middle of the room, from somewhere over the dance floor. It was time. Justin took a deep breath and said, "I'll walk with you as far as I can."
Brian nodded again, and breathed like he wanted to say something more but he didn't. He leaned forward and gently kissed Justin's forehead, let his arm slide down Justin's until their hands were clasped together, and led him forward. Justin turned briefly to Rube, praying that the other reaper wouldn't object, but he just nodded a little and waved them on.
Brian ghosted through the pile of debris in their path and carefully helped Justin climb around it as well. They were almost there, and right at the edge of the light Brian stopped and turned to face Justin again, taking both of his hands.
"So this is it."
"Yeah."
"Don't suppose you know where I'm going."
"No... none of us do." Justin chewed his lip, and he knew his palms were sweating against Brian's.
Brian dropped his eyes for a moment, and when he raised them again there was so much sadness, so much of Justin's own loneliness reflected in them that his breath caught. "Don't suppose you know when your turn will be, either."
Justin just shook his head mutely. Brian glanced back over his shoulder and then looked at Justin again, smiling softly. "Are you sure you won't come? They're playing our song."
Justin looked over Brian's shoulder at the growing light, and gasped.
It wasn't just a light from above, it was a -spotlight-, their blue-gelled spotlight and now that Brian had mentioned it, Justin could hear the music, too. And Justin knew then that -this- was Brian's moment, his beautiful place, and that it would have been Justin's as well. If he had died completely dead in the garage below, if he had been called to the other side instead of being made to stay behind in this half-life, the one thing that could have taken him from Brian's side would have been the chance to come back to this moment and dance in Brian's arms again.
--
Rube knew the moment Justin made his decision, it was written all over him, but he still had to try one last time. "You can't do this, kiddo. You can't go where he's going. Come on, let him go and I'll take you home."
But Brian was already backing towards the dance floor, holding Justin's hand in his and tugging gently. Justin paused long enough to look back at Rube and he smiled, the widest, truest smile Rube had ever seen on his face.
"I'm going with him."
Rube shook his head. The kid had no idea what he was getting into; then again, Rube didn't really know either. "Justin, don't!" But Justin didn't hear him. They were already inside, and as the light grew brighter Brian said something into Justin's ear that made him laugh, and Justin spun into his lover's arms and they began to dance. The light grew and grew until the two men inside it were nothing but light themselves, and Rube thought maybe he heard music just before the thunderclap that shook the ground under Rube's feet and left the rest of the hotel undisturbed. And they were both gone.
[4219/49115]
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