It Won't Be Out There, It Can't Be Far
 

Author's Note:  A birthday present for tweedygal! Title taken from the wonderful Erasure song "Miracle."

*****

When Brian turns ten, he’s convinced it’s his best birthday ever. For once, things are good at the plant where his dad works which means there is overtime and money and less drunken rages. His father makes up for working on his birthday by buying him a top of the line bike. Brian welcomes his absence as much as he does the bike. It’s his first taste of freedom, and while Brian doesn’t know it yet, the bike will be his strongest link to Michael. Brian will spend hours riding with him, will know the route to his house so well he can make it easily in the dark. Debbie gets tired of tripping over his bike on her way to the diner in the morning and silently hands him a key to the garage one night when he shows up unannounced again.

On his sixteenth birthday, Brian pays his father fifty dollars to take him to get his license. He’s been mowing lawns and delivering papers for two years, and he’s spent the last month scouring the classifieds for the best car he can get for the money he’s managed to save. Brian gets lucky and finds one that’s a step up from a piece of shit and isn’t covered in rust. As much as Brian later tries to hide his working class roots, he’s grateful for the hours his father forced him to spend in the garage. He’s able to keep the car running until he gets his first bonus from Ryder, and he can trade it in on something new. Brian never so much as refills his own windshield wiper fluid after that.

Brian couldn’t wait to turn eighteen. Sure he still has a month of school left, but he’s got his scholarship to college, and the minute the dorms open, he’s gone for good. He declares his freedom by refusing to show up at the traditional and dreaded birthday dinner his mother planned. Debbie bakes him a cake and takes him to the library to register to vote and sign up for “the fucking draft because it’s the law, but I’ll shoot your toe off myself if they ever try to use it again.” It’s the exact same thing she told Michael on his birthday. She also slips him fifty dollars he knows she can’t afford and a strip of condoms before kissing both him and Michael on the cheek and telling them to have a good time. When he gets home the next day, there is an uncut chocolate chip cake sitting on the counter next to an envelope with his name on it. Inside the card, he finds twenty dollars and a bill for rent. The note in his father’s handwriting says “Congratulations on becoming an adult. No more freeloading.”

Twenty-one is anticlimactic. Brian’s never been turned away from a club or had his ID questioned when he wanted a drink. But Michael wants to celebrate so he makes the drive back to Pittsburgh. He brings Lindsay with him, and it’s the first time she and Michael have met. Michael wasn’t expecting to share Brian with anyone, and he spends the first hour pouting, but then Lindsay hooks up with some other dyke at Woody’s, and once Michael sees them kissing outside the bathroom, he relaxes. Only Brian could make “Suck me, it’s my birthday” work as a pick-up line, and he spends most of the night in the backroom of Babylon.

No one talks about Brian’s thirtieth birthday anymore. If they asked, Brian would say he never thinks about it, but that would be a lie. On nights when he can’t sleep, either because he’s alone or because Justin’s own restless slumber has him on edge, it seems like it’s all he thinks about. There are so many what ifs, so many ways it could have gone differently. The simplest, easiest place to start is with Michael not showing up at the loft that night. Brian no longer wonders about what would have happened if Michael’s fears had come true and something had gone wrong because if there is one thing cancer taught him, it’s that you are never as ready to die as you think you are. Instead he imagines he found what he was looking for, the perfect orgasm, the ultimate high, and he spends the rest of the night in his bed, drunk and sated. What he can’t picture is a future when Justin and Daphne dance and laugh and then go home. It’s easier to imagine the attack still happening, but this time he’s not there to capture Justin’s attention and change the angle of the blow. This time he’s not there to make sure Hobbs only gets one swing of the bat. Daphne is left to be the horrified witness, or maybe another victim.

But what if Hobbs hadn’t been in that parking garage? What would their “later” have looked like? That’s the question that haunts Brian more often than he’d ever admit. Brian doesn’t know what it says about him that he’s never been sure that the promise of that dance, that one perfect moment, would have been enough to keep them together. He thinks sometimes there is something in all that loss, pain, and blood that goes much deeper. He asks Justin about it once, and immediately wishes he hadn’t when he sees the flash of pain in Justin’s eyes. It’s an impossible question; one Justin can’t answer because that night remains a blank to him. He still doesn’t know how he felt as the glided across the floor or remember how Brian looked at him as they kissed for the last time.

Over the years, Justin has truly become the one who lives without regrets. He’s worked through his demons in a way Brian’s never been able to, so when he answers, Brian knows it’s the truth.

“I don’t know,” he says after a long silence. “I don’t know what would have happened. But I do know I wouldn’t trade what we have now for a chance to find out.”

They spend the rest of the night kissing and touching like they have all the time in the world. When Justin fucks him slowly and carefully, Brian lets go of guilt he didn’t even know he had.

Brian spends his thirty-fifth birthday in a hotel room in New York with Justin sucking frosting off his cock. The cake provided by room service is a gourmet masterpiece they never take a bite of. But Brian takes the frosting Justin left behind and fills his ass with it, savoring every last drop. By the time Brian has to catch his plane, they’ve fucked for thirty-six hours without ever leaving the bed. They’re a filthy, sticky mess, and Brian barely has time to shower. It’s worth every penny the hotel charges for new sheets.

When Brian turns forty, Gus is old enough to think birthdays are both cool and important. He also thinks forty is incredibly old. Brian gives into his pleadings, and he and Justin spend the weekend after his birthday in Canada. He laughs at every one of Gus’s old age jokes and blows out all forty candles on the cake that declares him “Over The Hill.” It’s worth it to see the pride Gus takes in every awkwardly wrapped gift he hands his father.

The best part of the weekend is watching JR. She inherited Michael’s eyes, but her version of his patented puppy dog looks are trained exclusively on Justin. She follows him everywhere, blushing and giggling when he looks at her, but hardly saying a word until Justin hugs her goodbye, and she declares him “the handsomest, smartest, wonderfulest man in the world.” Lindsay later tells him that it took them hours to convince her to hang the sketch Justin drew of her on the wall instead of sleeping with it under her pillow. Brian can’t wait to call Michael and tell him how his daughter mooned over the person he once called a teen stalker. Michael just laughs and says he’s glad JR has better taste in crushes than he did.

Brian was never supposed to see fifty. He’d eventually let go of the fantasy of going out in a blaze of glory when he was still young and beautiful, but not even his most long range plans had him living this long. The party is inevitable and takes place in Kinnetik’s largest conference room. Brian spends the week before it quietly freaking out.

Over time, the age difference between himself and Justin has ceased to matter. But with him facing fifty before Justin turns forty, it looms over him in a way it hasn’t since Justin was a teenager. He’s been a dick, pushing Justin away then resenting his distance. They came to the party separately, Brian storming out before Justin finished dressing. Justin catches his eye just then and smiles, letting Brian know all is forgiven. Justin probably knew what the problem was long before he did. Guests keep arriving, and Brian makes a point of greeting everyone, but he catches glimpses of Justin now and again - talking quietly with Gus and his girlfriend, laughing with Debbie, pretending to care what one of Brian’s biggest clients thinks about his painting hanging on the wall. It hits him that he’s spent most of the last twenty years with Justin, and once again the twelve years between them don’t seem that important.

No one asked Brian to speak, most likely because they were afraid of what he would say, and he can’t blame them. Half of them probably expected him to get drunk and demand a birthday orgy. He briefly toys with the idea of tearfully declaring that he’s been living a lie all these years, and he’s really straight, but he could never fake liking pussy long enough to be convincing.

As the night wears on, Brian knows that given the chance he would have say something he’d regret even more. Spending this night he’s been dreading with his friends and family leaves Brian certain that any speech he gave would have lacked the sarcasm expected and instead betrayed the genuine appreciation and happiness he still tries to hide. Brian hates celebrations like this because it’s impossible to avoid reflecting on your life and the people you share it with. No matter how you looked at it, Brian’s a very lucky man. He blames this sentimentality for his uncharacteristic civility when Joan calls him the next morning to wish him a happy birthday and he finds himself thanking her instead of hanging up.

Finally, everyone is gone but Justin and the pile of gifts he doesn’t need. Justin kisses him quickly before settling against his side and surveying the empty room. “So is this when you declare you’re never having another birthday, and if we insist on any more parties we can have them without you because you’ll be busy fucking your way through the backroom?” Justin sounds both amused and resigned.

“Close, but I had my heart set on private celebrations with only my most well hung friends.” They laugh, and partly just to prove Justin doesn’t know him as well as he thinks he does, Brian continues, “But I’ve changed my mind.”

Justin doesn’t take the bait, doesn’t prod; he just waits, like he always has, for Brian to figure out what he really wants. He thinks briefly of his wish to die before thirty, of all the things he’d been sure he didn’t want to live long enough to see - his body marred by cancer, Gus’s graduation, falling in love and making a real commitment, Michael’s independence, his first grey hair, wrinkles, being called “sir” at Babylon. Brian realizes he hasn’t survived all that just to let a number intimidate or define him.

“I’ve decided I can’t wait until next year. Age is just a number, you know.”

Justin chokes back a laugh. “Aren’t you full of surprises tonight. If age is just a number, can you still fuck me all night long?”

“Just try and keep up.” He pulls Justin from the room, and the chorus from a song he barely remembers pops into his head. Something about being forever young. He sings it the best he can, and they dance, between laughter and kisses, all the way to the car.
 

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