In His Kiss

Chapter 27

Last day at Plexus.


When his alarm went off the next morning, Justin felt all right. He got up, showered, got dressed and went into the kitchen. It was spotless. Somebody had done his job. He felt a wave of affection for his roommates. There was some porridge on, and he filled a bowl and ate it, then left for work.

Everyone in the Art Department was happy to see him. It was his last day, but they had piles of work for him to do. Randy, in particular, wanted only Justin to do his coloring, saying it just came out better. Well he would have to do without him soon enough.

Mid-morning, Brian put in a appearance, dropping a file on Justin’s desk on his way to Sam’s office. Justin picked it up. It was Brian’s preliminary work on a winery in Washington State. He looked at the due date. Jan 12. Well, that certainly wasn’t an emergency, and considering the backlog in Justin’s to do basket, the chances of him getting to it today were pretty much nil. He closed the file, and put it in the corner of his desk.

“Coloring” encompassed many things. The analysis of the design, the choices guided by the customer surveys, the study of the different contrasts. Some of it was done by computer, some of it with actual brushes and ink. The last required care, but not much thinking once the choices had been made, and allowed Justin’s mind to wander. That morning, it automatically went to the challenge of wine label design.

By his lunch hour, Justin had several ideas. He forwent his run for once, and studied Brian’s notes again. It was fascinating to see how his mind worked, and he loved his handwriting. It looked like the handwriting on architectural drawings. Was he left-handed?

His concepts were all over the place, though one in particular resonated with Justin. He took out his laptop, started a design file, and went to work.

He had hardly started when lunch was over and he had to go back to the work with priority, but now that his creative mind had been put in gear, he could not shut it off. For the next three and a half hours, it worked on the design, as his hands accomplished other tasks. At five to five, Sam came over.

“Time to go home, Justin.” He smiled at him, and Justin noted everyone had gotten up to gather around. From nowhere, a rather ill shaped cake, a fresh pot of coffee and some Ben and Jerry's ice cream made their appearance, and everyone partook, while teasing, thanking and generally embarrassing the hell out of him. He took it all in stride, and appreciated what it meant for this group of driven folks, under a ton of pressure at the moment, to take the time and give him a proper farewell.

After a half hour, Sam said, “All right. Well, it’s back to work for us. Drop by anytime, Justin. Let us know what’s happening. And when you’re rich and famous, remember the little people.”

Justin laughed. “Thanks for the send off, everyone, but at the risk of being anticlimactic, I’m going to finish Randy’s boards now, before I go.”

“I love this guy,” said Randy, slapping his shoulder.

All trace of the impromptu party gone, everyone went back to work.

Justin finished in the next half hour. It was 6:00 PM. He wondered what Brian was up to, and what his expectations were for the evening. Were they meeting at the club? Were they leaving from work together? It seemed stupid now that they had not made plans.

He decided to call Cynthia.

“Cynthia, this is Justin.”

“Hey. What’s up?”

“Brian gave me a file to look over. I was going to bring it back up before I left. What time is his last appointment?”

“He should be done around seven. You’re in luck, he should have been gone by now, he’d asked to be out by five, as if that happens more than once in a blue moon, but something came up. Be warned, he’s in a mood. When I told him he couldn’t leave, he practically took my head off.”

“Thanks for the warning. I’ll proceed with caution.”

“You do that. By the way, I love your painting in the lobby.”

“Oh. Thanks.”

Justin opened his laptop, and worked fast. He had already thought about the design so much that the whole thing was coming together quickly. He printed a partial drawing, and added details to it by hand, then scanned the whole thing back in. It was almost there, though still in black and white, and without lettering.

Choosing the font took forever. It needed to be original, yet easily readable, bold without being obnoxious and because of the delicacy of the design, elegant. He had literally thousands to choose from, having added the whole Plexus font file to his own. It suddenly occurred to him that that was probably not quite legal. Oh, well. Too late. And here he was using them to work on a Plexus project anyway, so there.

He finally found what he was looking for.

Placement was an art. That took forever as well. Looking at the project, he liked what he saw, though in his opinion it was only half done. He printed it again, and added hand shading. That alone could take hours but, for now, he would just use basic cross-hatching. He was in the process of scanning the design into his computer again when the phone on his desk rang.

“Cynthia told me you had a file for me?” Brian. His heart flipped.

“I do. Should I bring it up on my way out?”

“Please. I’m done as well. Don’t take too long.”

Justin smiled to himself, and printed his design both in the size he had been working it, and then in the actual size of a wine label, choosing blood red ink. He put both pages on top of the folder, burned the file on a CD he also slipped in the folder, took up his stuff and left.

“Bye, everybody! I’m off!”

He cracked up when Jules started a chorus of “For he’s a jolly good fellow!” that lasted all the way until the elevator doors closed. His heart beating rather fast, he pressed the ‘3’ button.

Cynthia smiled at him, gesturing to him to go right in.

“Good luck,” she whispered, as he knocked. He was pretty confident Brian’s earlier ire would not in any way include him, but she had no way of knowing that.

“Yes!” was the terse reply. Whatever happened to, “Come in?”

Justin entered Brian’s inner sanctum, and was surprised once again by his painting on the wall. He hadn’t thought about it being there for a while and had sort of forgotten about it. It looked great. Had the leather chairs always been that complementary green, or had Brian had them re-covered to emphasize his work? He thought the latter. He remembered them being black before. The effect was beautiful.

“You like the chairs?”

He’d been right. “Very much.”

“Me too.”

Brian was standing behind him, looking at the overall effect as well. He was so close Justin could feel his heat through his t-shirt and Brian's breath on his neck. He stepped away, turning back and handing him the file.

“I’m sorry I won’t have time to complete this project. It’s going to be fun.”

“I think so. Maybe you can freelance.”

“I thought Plexus never used freelance, that you always did everything in house.”

“Yes, it’s been our policy. It just seemed right up your alley.” Brian put the file back on his desk without opening it.

“Huh… I did do a little work on it.”

“You did?” Brian picked up the file again, sat on the corner of his desk and opened it. He stared at the full size printout, picked it up, and noticed the real size one. He stared some more, comparing the two.

Justin had drawn his idea of St Blanche in art deco style, surrounded with an arbor of grapes and holding a crystal goblet. The bottom of her thin shift was tied up, and her feet stained with grape juice as she came down the small stairs leading to a crushing vat. Crushing grapes is hard work, and sweat had dampened her thin dress, which clung to her body. Her long hair had partially come undone, and was tumbling down her back. She was erotic and magnificent.

Brian looked at Justin, stunned.

“When did you do this?”

“Over lunch. And tonight.”

“It’s… exquisite.” His eyes were drawn again to the drawing.

Justin smiled. “It’s not quite finished.”

“Brian shook his head. “You’re wrong . It’s perfect. Just… perfect.”

“But…”

Brian interrupted him. “You know the story of the Gerber baby, right?”

“Right. It was just a rough sketch, that the artist made to show she could draw a baby.”

“Right. And someone at Gerber was wise enough to see that it was never going to be better than it was. This is the same. It’s done, Justin. It’s exactly what it’s supposed to be.”

Justin came to look over his shoulder. The drawing was raw, but breathed, the simple lines pure, the etching simple yet perfectly clear. He could see what Brian meant, and smiled again.

“There you go, then. My last contribution to Plexus.”

Brian carefully put the pictures back in the folder, and said simply, ”Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

Then, as he looked at Justin, something changed in Brian, and Justin could feel the hair rise at the nape of his neck. Brian’s eyes, his smile, his stance, his whole body radiated pure unadulterated sexual power.

His voice deeper than normal, he said, “Let’s go, Justin,” and Justin’s cock started filling, in wholehearted approval of that suggestion.

“Let’s,” he answered.

As they rather quickly passed Cynthia’s desk, she looked a little stunned at Brian’s hurried “See you tomorrow,” and Justin turned to her with an apologetic smile. “Bye, Cynthia.”

In front of Plexus, Brian hailed a cab and they got in. He gave his address, and closed his eyes, leaning his head against the seat. Justin just looked his fill. Brian was so beautiful in repose, seemingly relaxed, though the tenting of his winter coat and the sexuality rolling off of him told a different tale.

He had a gorgeous profile, and those lips, that hair… It seemed only minutes before they pulled up to his building. There was a code to get in, a code to call the elevator, a code for the front door, and a code for the alarm. Justin vaguely wondered if they were all different. Brian walked into what turned out to be a magnificent loft, shedding clothing as he went.

Gloves, scarf, coat flew to the back of the couch, dress shoes and socks landed near it, suit jacket and pants dropped on the back of a chair, and finally, Brian turned to Justin, who was still standing by the door. He unbuttoned his shirt, unbuttoned his cuffs and let it fall to the floor, soon followed by his undershirt and underwear. He stood there on the stairs apparently leading to an enclosed elevated platform that seemed to be his bedroom, arms slightly out from his body, looking perfect, his magnificent cock fully erect.

“So… Are you coming or going? …or coming, and then going …or coming… and staying?”

Under Brian’s unwavering gaze, Justin took off his own jacket, his scarf, his hoody, and his t-shirt. He bent down to unlace his work boots, and take off his socks, undid his buttoned fly, and dropped his pants.

Fully naked, he walked up to Brian, whose eyes were devouring him. He stopped at the bottom of the stairs, looked up at him, and simply said:

”Fuck me.”

Brian leaned over and grabbed his wrist, and pulled him up the steps into his bedroom. Justin stopped in his tracks. Behind Brian’s back, low to the floor, was a king-size bed, in the middle of the otherwise empty room. The head of the bed had vertical bars. And behind the bed, covering practically the entire wall, was his red painting.

He stared at it for a moment, causing Brian to look over his shoulder before turning back to Justin, realizing what had startled him. He might have said something except for the fact that Justin walked right into his arms, raised himself on his toes and kissed him.

Return to In His Kiss