To:wutendeskind From: Ellyrianna Title: Once Around the Block Gift Request: A post-513 happy ending. Rating: PG-13 (language) Summary: It was mid-December, ten days to Christmas, cold as the Arctic Circle, and the heating in the loft was shot.
“Fuck Pittsburgh,” Brian said out of the blue one day.
Snow had just started falling for the first time even though it was already mid-December, ten days to Christmas, and cold as the Arctic Circle. The heating in the loft was shot because the building’s heat pump had exploded on Monday. They had been sleeping in their coats, eating in scarves and hats. Justin was wearing gloves to paint. His strokes were awkward, lacking his usual finesse.
“Why?” Justin asked, glancing up over the top of his rickety easel. He coughed into his shoulder and then shook his head, disgusted, at his painting. He wriggled his toes in his heavy wool socks and took a step back to examine his work.
“I’m tired of scraping off my fucking windshield every morning and then, on top of that, having the ultimate pleasure of getting into a cold car.” Brian clicked viciously at something on his computer and then slammed his fist down on the keyboard.
Justin figured he had tried to download a corrupted porn file. The cold made Brian too lethargic to get worked up over anything less offensive. Strangely, it didn’t impede his sex drive or performance.
“I think it’s time you invested in a kind of exclusive parking garage,” Justin mused. “You could buy out the one up the block, and then charge, like, $500 a spot so that there isn’t a lot of traffic.”
“Remember that time I told you that you were brilliant?” Brian wondered aloud.
“Yeah,” Justin said warily.
“I take it back.”
Justin scrutinized his painting for another minute before kicking a leg of the easel and causing the whole precarious apparatus to collapse on the floor with a resounding crash.
Brian said, “Still throwing drama fits at 25 – some things never change.”
“It was for shit anyway.” Justin slowly started cleaning the mess up, grateful for Brian’s obsession over his imported Italian floors and strict demand that all painting in the loft come accompanied with old tablecloths spread out over it and any nearby furniture. “Can we go to the diner? It’s too fucking cold in here to move, and we’re out of booze again.”
Brian considered his second download of the day and also Justin’s mass destruction of his loft. He shrugged and stood up. “Why not.”
The only good part about having no heating was not having to go through the whole ordeal of coordinating any outerwear. (Brian had strict rules about which scarves went with which coats, whereas Justin threw on everything he owned and then had to listen to Brian bitch about how he looked like a hobo for fifteen minutes afterwards.)
Brian took a hat out of the closet and pulled it snug over Justin’s ears. “That sheepdog hair of yours isn’t enough to keep you from getting frostbite,” he explained, adjusting his scarf, which was black.
He had made the mistake of once trying to impart fashion advice on Justin and said that black-on-black was the chicest look anyone could wear. Since then, Justin had only bought Brian Christmas presents of black scarves, the only difference between them all the varying textures and patterns. Brian claimed to hate them every year, but he never threw them out, and even occasionally wore one.
They walked despite the snow because Brian didn’t feel like scraping the Corvette’s windshield. At the diner, Michael and Ben were bickering over Hunter’s tuition in a booth by the door and Emmett was going over specifics for a party with a client. Melanie and Lindsay were sitting on stools and trying to coax the kids into eating eggs. Ted and Blake stumbled out of the men’s room, faces flushed, and squeezed into Michael and Ben’s booth.
“Hey,” Michael said when Brian and Justin walked in. “We were wondering when you would show up.”
They ordered coffee and a croissant to share, but when Justin put ketchup on the plate to dip it in, Brian relinquished his half. Debbie came around to tousle their snow-webbed hair and Michael twisted in his booth to regale them with his latest tales from Comic Land.
After the lezzies were satisfied with Gus’s completion of his lunch, he came over and Brian hoisted him into the booth. Technically Gus was too big for that, but as long as it was Brian doing it, he didn’t seem to mind.
“What is Justin doing?” Gus asked Brian loudly behind the shield of his hand.
“Being disgusting,” Brian answered.
Justin kicked him under the table.
Gus giggled, and then he sneezed. Brian handed him a napkin. “It’s not soft,” Gus protested.
Brian offered the end of his scarf, which was one Justin had gotten for him two years before.
“Hey!” Justin exclaimed, snatching it away from Gus’s outstretched hand. “Just use a napkin, Gus, it’s fine.” “Are you guys coming to Christmas here?” Michael asked.
“Where else would we go?” Brian and Justin asked in unison, and then grimaced at their perfect timing.
“I think we should see other people,” Justin said.
“We already do,” Brian flatly replied.
They wound up hanging around the diner for another hour and half, managing to finish two plates of fries and several more coffees in the interim. Gus made a mess of salt and pepper on the table, Emmett’s client left with promises to peddle his card to all of her garden-party friends, and Ben gave up trying to crunch the numbers and declared that he would have to moonlight as a male escort if they hoped to pay for Hunter’s school without going bankrupt.
The sky was darkening outside when they finally left. Lindsay and Melanie piled their brood into their Subaru hatchback, Mikey and the professor strolled away arm-in-arm, and the other three did whatever it was they did.
Brian slung an arm around Justin’s shoulders and they walked to the liquor store as the snow started up again. They picked out a bottle of whiskey to replace the one they had finished up the night before and got beer to restock the fridge. Justin snuck a bottle of vodka into the checkout line and grinned when Brian realized it too late and silently fumed.
The loft was still cold when they got back. Brian cracked the cache of alcohol and they drank until their faces flushed and the tips of their feet warmed. They stripped off the coats and hats and gloves and scarves and collapsed into the bed, the light overhead glowing in the dark, the neck of the JD bottle clutched in Brian’s hand.
“I think I’ll start a new painting tomorrow,” Justin said absently. He lit a cigarette and held it casually out of Brian’s reach when he stretched for it. “What do you want for Christmas?”
“Not another motherfucking black scarf,” Brian dutifully replied.
“Too bad, I already bought it. What are you getting me?”
“I’ve shelled out so much money for you over the years that you don’t deserve anything.”
“Fuck you.”
“A new easel.”
Justin looked at him curiously. “How did you know I would break mine?”
“Please. That monstrosity was held together with rubber bands and a prayer,” Brian said, rolling his eyes.
Justin kissed him then and decided that that kind of thoughtfulness probably deserved a blowjob. He did just that, and then they fucked as languidly as Brian felt in the cold, drawing it out and finishing almost at the same time.
Afterwards, Brian changed the sheets because Justin was whining about lying in the cold spot and then he crawled back into bed, pulling Justin close to him. An hour later Justin was shivering against him and begging him to get the spare blankets from the closet.
“You have two functioning legs, you know,” Brian reminded him as he trudged naked to the closet and tugged the eiderdowns out of their dusty compartments in the roof of the closet.
“You’re closer,” Justin said logically. Brian spread the blankets over his balled-up form and then got back under. Justin immediately curled up against him like a dog. Sighing heavily, like it was the hardest thing he ever had to do, Brian stroked back Justin’s hair from his forehead. “We should go to the house tomorrow.”
“If you start with any of that romantic ‘reliving the day’ shit I am going to kick your ass out of this bed and make you sleep on the couch with only the scarves you’ve bought me over the years to keep you from freezing,” Brian warned.
“I mean because there’s heat there,” Justin clarified.
Brian thought that was actually the smartest thing Justin had ever suggested, and he was about to actually tell him so when he realized that Justin had fallen asleep.