Homecoming

*6*

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Moving On

Brian

When we finally get around to checking, there's a message from Ma Taylor that they've accepted the offer.

I guess that's a good thing.

I mean, I know it is. I know he's right about us not living here. And I'm damned if I'm going to get all lesbionic over some heap of bricks and mortar.

So I make a call to Cyn, and after telling her that if she breathes anything to anyone about it, I'll string her up by whatever private parts are available, I give her the challenge of finding decent movers who can get all our stuff out of here on Monday, and also somewhere to store it.

She pretends that she doesn't know anything about the house having any furniture apart from the stuff that was here when I bought it that is part of the sale, which is bullshit. I think. Ted still handles all my bills, private as well as for the company, so either he's a lot more close mouthed than I give him credit for, or she's missed out on a career on stage. Doesn't matter. She's going to deal with all that shit, so Justin and I can just ?

I put down the phone and turn to look at him.

He looks surprisingly emotional, given that he's the one who's always insisted that we can't live here.

I walk over to him and, grabbing his shirt, pull him against me. I brush my nose across his and he smiles, even if it is a bit wobbly. I lean my forehead against his, and say softly, "Sunshine, if we're going to try to hold onto every place that we ever live in together, then one of us seriously needs to consider a future in the rented property market."

He laughs and pushes at me, but I hold on tight and he leans back into me and wraps his arms around me.

"Can I at least take some photos?" he asks.

I shrug.

"I mean, without you giving me shit about how sentimental I am."

Little shit.

I grin at him, and say, "Depends on what's featured in the photos."

He pokes my ribs and says, "You know ?"

His eyes drift to the fireplace and I give a long-suffering sigh.

"With or without my dick?" I say.

He giggles.

Shit! How did I ever think I could live without hearing that sound? In anyone else it would annoy the fuck out of me, but in him, in him it stands for home. And once again I get this squeeze around my heart and I want to grab him and hold him as the realization washes over me once more that he's fucking home.

Justin's come home to me.

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Justin

We goof around taking some photos of the fireplace, the couch, the windows. He's in some of them. He makes me pose in others. All family friendly. Then he sends me off to make coffee while he figures out how to work the timer on my camera. He sneaks up and takes another snap of me making the coffee, then he settles me on the couch, sets up the camera and timer, and experiments taking photos of us drinking our coffee, smiling mock-sweetly at the camera, and at each other. Then he sets the camera to keep shooting automatically, and there are a few of us with those fake smiles, and then they fade away and are replaced by shots of us simply staring into each other's eyes.

After that, the smiles are real ones, warm and loving, and full of tenderness. I can hardly wait to download these images because I want to paint them. Or at least capture in paint the feeling in them. Because our faces show the shadows of pain, and loneliness, even despair but while you look at them, you see the pain being replaced with joy, the despair with hope and the loneliness with a recognition of togetherness so profound that it's like a solid presence, a living entity, sharing the image-space with us.

We review what we've taken while we drink our coffee, and fight over whether some of them get deleted. Of course, Brian wants to delete any photo where he looks less than model-perfect, and I want to keep them all. The fact that he doesn't suggest deleting all of them because they're so fucking mushy makes me smile down to my toes. I try not to let him see that, but he knows, and mumbles something about "privacy" and "deny" and "photoshop". I laugh at him and he sticks his tongue into his cheek for a moment and then gives in and laughs back.

He takes the coffee cups out to the kitchen, and by the time he gets back I'm waiting for him on the rug. These are photos that no one else will ever see; but they capture what will always be my main image of this house: the firelight flickering across Brian's body, turning the natural sheen of sex and sweat to a deep glow, making him impossibly beautiful, other-worldly, as he makes love to me; making us somehow immortal, as if somehow this part of us, of Brian and Justin, is captured and held safe some place outside time, so that somewhere we will always be like this - our union, our passion, our love caught and held forever in the flickering firelight.

Eventually we go upstairs and pull bedding from one of the other rooms into "our" room. Then, for the first and last time, we fall asleep there, curled together, his long body spooned around mine.

Sleep comes easily, as it did last night. I'd forgotten what that was like. For months now, sleep has been something to be fought for; brief, fragmented, so hard-won that the night's struggles always left me more tired, more depleted by the time morning finally came.

But not this time. Instead we both sleep like the dead, and in the morning we make love at last in this room that we'll never really get to use. Although in some ways I feel impatient now to get moving, to get a start on this new stage of our being together, yet this still starts out slow and leisured. And all the time, under the heat and passion and need, I feel a deep still kernel of peace at the heart of the "harder", "more", "now!" urgency.

We lie there for a while afterwards, side by side. My head is on his shoulder, and his hand is dangling down over mine. His fingers idly stroke my arm, mine lightly rub his hip - small touches that somehow satisfy a need deeper even than the passion we've just shared. I feel like I'm floating with pleasure, with relief. The absence of stress and longing and fear and regret leaves me feeling so relaxed I could float off into the ether. Part of me wants to get up and moving, but mainly I just want to lie here with him forever.

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Brian

The back of his head is resting on the junction where my are meets my shoulder, so my arm is crooked awkwardly behind and around his head and it's starting to go numb. His elbow is resting on my chest and every time he moves his hand it digs into my fucking ribs a little. My leg is trapped under his calf, and that's going numb as well. It's fucking uncomfortable, and I'm damned if I want to move a muscle.

It takes me a while to recognize this feeling and when I do it's a shock; it's contentment. That's what I'm feeling. I'm content.

Part of me is fucking offended by that. Straights and boring old farts are content. Not people like me.

But ? it feels so fucking good. For the first time in a long, long time ? so long that maybe it's forever, there's nothing that I'm scared of, nothing that I have to push to the back of my mind, the deepest parts of my psyche, in case its power tears me apart. The worst has happened. He left me. Again. And now he's home.

He's here. He's fucking here. And this time he's really planning to stay. This time it's not "till he gets better", or "till he wakes up to what a total fucking disaster of a man you are", or "till he finds out all the great things that are out there waiting for him". He's been there, done that, sent the postcards, and still come back to me. This time he knows what all the options are, and the option he wants has me in it.

So while the next few days are going to be chaos - packing the stuff we need from here, working out what has to be sold, what has to go into storage, not to mention dealing with all the crew once they find out he's back ? It doesn't matter.

None of it matters.

He's fucking here.

And whether we live here, or at the loft, or on a fucking street corner ? it just doesn't fucking matter.

Because...

Well, because.

For some reason that thought suddenly fills me with energy, so I roll him off my arm, slap his ass and head for the shower.

He follows of course. Little nympho.

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Justin

I suppose that I should be surprised that he behaves as if he's had this all planned for months, but I'm not. He's such a damned control freak that he probably spent last night planning it all out in his sleep. So I find myself not even arguing much as he details what we'll take back with us this trip, what we'll try to take in the next trip and what can be left to the movers.

He wants to take the painting I was working on yesterday, but there's no way ? it needs at least some time to dry.

I suggest the food, but he hums and haws over that and I finally realize that he wants to leave it here in case we want to spend tonight here as well. I manage to convince him that we can take at least some of the stuff back with us and that way we'll have food both here and at the loft. Cyn calls at one stage and tells him that some moving boxes will be delivered today. He tells her that the garage will be open and they can be left in there. She says the movers will be here by eight am Monday, and anything we don't want to pack ourselves, we should just leave with labels on them saying where they have to be delivered. She's organized a storage facility, so we can have the personal stuff like my art stuff delivered to the loft, and everything else can go into storage, at least for now.

While he's getting the details, I cook us some breakfast and we sit and eat it in the kitchen. Probably the only meal we'll ever eat here. I'm beginning to feel a bit nostalgic over that, but then Brian is dragging me upstairs. He goes to my studio, throws open the door and I see the room lit by sunlight for the first time. It's beautiful, and I start to second guess myself and wonder if we really should stay here. The thing is, if the house was just this room, the lounge area and kitchen. with a couple of bed and bathrooms, it would be perfect. But it isn't. It's fucking huge. And I can't even imagine the effort it would take to keep it clean and well maintained. I know we could get people in to do that, of course, but they still have to be managed and paid and all that shit, and they go on holidays and leave and have to be replaced, and I just don't want all that hassle.

While I'm going through all this in my head again, Brian digs out the camera. I smile and suddenly know that this is the right move. What I need from this place isn't the bricks and mortar, it's what it's already given me, the promise of a home together. And the other things, the things particular to this place, those are in my heart, and I can keep them with me always - the words Brian said to me when he asked me to marry him; making love with him by the fire, eating together downstairs, spending time with him in this room that he made just for me ? all those things, the essence of them, I will always have, no matter where we live.

So we take some photos and then head downstairs to finish packing the car.

He'd arranged for us to go to Mom's office to sign all the papers, so, after dropping the food off at the loft, we do that. We're working out just what to do next, when Mom gives a funny little cough and says, "I don't want you to think I'm interfering ..."

Which puts me on the alert right away.

Brian just gets this look, almost amused, like he finds the situation of actually having someone who is almost a mother in law kind of hilarious.

"Interfere?" he says, grinning so she knows he's joking - almost. "You? Ma, the thought would never have crossed my mind."

They look at each other and she blushes a little. There have been times when she's interfered in both big ways and small, but she holds her ground (this is my Mom after all) and says, "I don't know how serious you are about finding another place..."

I stiffen a little and look at Brian. He goes still and his eyes meet mine. I guess the hope shining in mine gives him a good clue to what I think about that, and by the way he suddenly drops his eyes, trying to hide his smile, I know we're on the same page. I move closer to him, and feel his hand on my back. "We're serious," he says.

Mom looks for a moment like she's going to cry, but she's got this big smile on her face at the same time. I brace myself to head her off from smothering us both in a big hug, but she gets a grip and says just a little shakily, "Well, we do have something on the books that..."

Then she stops and bites her lip. "I ...perhaps I shouldn't ...I don't know if..."

She finally stammers to a stop. Brian looks at her like she's losing it, and maybe he's right. I mean, what the fuck? Is there some big state secret about this place or something?

"I don't know if he'll even let me show it to you," she says. "But I could call and ask him."

Brian shrugs, a little irritably. I know what he's thinking. It sounds like the owner's some fag-hating nut job, who'll go ape over the idea of two queers living there, and who wants to live in a place that's going to remind you of something like that?

"He .." Mom sighs. "He's very difficult. But the place is beautiful, and right on the river."

I cut in before Brian can say anything, "Look, Mom, if he's some fag hater then..."

"Oh, no!" she says. "No, nothing like that. In fact, he's gay himself, I think. At least, he lived there with another man for years, so ?"

Brian and I exchange a look and a little grin. So, not a fag hater then.

"So what's his story?" Brian asks.

Mom sighs. "The place has been on the books for months. Nearly a year. He says he wants to sell, but every time we call to tell him we have someone who wants to view he gives us the third degree, and even when we do take them out there, he is just so rude, and flatly refuses to even consider their offer. And just about everyone has made an offer. It's an amazing place."

I frown. "Mom, we're not looking for another mansion," I tell her.

"No, no. It's nothing like that. It only has three bedrooms and one of those is tiny. It's...unusual. They took a really old, quite small two-story cottage, bought up the land next door, knocked down the house there and extended. You'd have to see it. I can't explain it to you."

Brian shrugs. "Well, if you think we'd like it, give him a call."

She looks really scared for a moment, and then nods. She gets out her book and dials a number from it. We sit and listen to the conversation.

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Brian

Don't know what all the fucking fuss is about, if this old fart doesn't want to sell, fuck him. We'll find what we want elsewhere. But Justin's got that look...the one that says his interest has been caught, so if we don't at least see the place he'll bug the living shit out of me, with all his "I wonder what it was like" and "I wonder why he's like that" and all that bullshit. So it's easier just to let his curiosity have its say and at least get to see the house and maybe meet the guy and after that...well, who knows? If Justin likes it, then it's probably just down to the money, and that's not a problem.

Ma Taylor sounds a little rattled when she first gets on the phone, but when he starts to give her a hard time, she digs her toes in and insists ever so nicely that he should let us see it. I have to stifle a laugh. I could tell the guy now to give it up. Watching her in action, it isn't hard to see where little Sunshine gets his pit bull qualities. This guy doesn't stand a chance. If Justin likes the house, he'll have both of them after him. Suddenly I find myself looking forward to the contest. I think this is going to be amusing.

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Justin

Mom gets the guy to agree to her taking us to the house this afternoon. Which means we have time to get some lunch. I'm wondering if we should go to the diner, when I hear Brian inviting Mom to eat with us. I nearly choke.

She gets all flustered, and says she doesn't want to intrude, and she knows I've only just got back and all that, but Brian just smiles one of his inscrutable (he thinks) Brian smiles and we wind up in a nice restaurant up on Mount Washington. Once we get there, he pumps her about the guy and the house, in the most laid back way. I mean, he behaves as if he's not at all interested which somehow makes her all the more determined to tell us everything she knows.

It's not really a lot.

Apparently the guy is really wealthy. I mean, seriously. He owned some big engineering firm or something, and sold it at the right time, so he has more money than he knows what to do with. But the guy he was living with got sick right around the time he sold up. Mom doesn't know, but it sounds like it might have been AIDS. Something that made him really weak, anyway, so they just lived together in that house till the other guy died. Now the owner wants to sell up and go back to England.

I prick up my ears at that. I hadn't realized he was a Brit. I have a thing for Brits. It's the accent, I think. But of course, this guy is old, so ?

I catch Brian's eye. He knows just what I was thinking, because he grins at me, and then grins even wider when Mom says, "You mustn't mind if he's rude to you. He's like that with every one. Or at least, he's been like that every time we've taken anyone there."

I think about that for a moment, about what it must be like to have strangers wandering through your home, through your life, almost; through the place you'd live in with someone you loved, someone you'd watch fade away and die; what it would be like to have people trampling all over your memories, and suddenly I don't blame him. I think I'd be rude too. I think I'd have to be, or else I'd just burst into tears or something.

I feel Brian's hand on my knee, suddenly, and for a moment when I look at him, I see him through a mist. Then I blink, and the mist is gone, but his hand is still warm on my leg and I feel better.

It's not a long drive to the house, and of course we do it faster than Mom, so we pull up across the road and sit and look at it.

From the front, it actually looks a little weird - lop-sided, almost. It's hard to believe there was ever another house next door. It must have been the same kind, kind of narrow looking, with a high, sloping roof. Maybe they were joined or something. Now there's nothing on that side, but a garage, and then some trees between this house and the next. On the other, the land falls away down to the river in a sort of curve. The river must cut back this way down there, and I guess the land must fall right away, because there's a sort of gap with only trees, and then the road curves round with the river, and it's a little while before the houses start again. The ground seems slightly higher just here, too, as if the house stands on the highest point. It makes it seem isolated, remote. Even on this suburban street.

Looking at it, just from the outside, gives me shivers, and without even seeing the inside, I suddenly know that this is where I want to live, this is where I want us to live, this is where I want to build my life with Brian.

I try to batten down that feeling because I know that I have to appear really calm, and maybe not all that interested, so that Brian can negotiate on the price. I can't let anyone see what I am really feeling.

Mom arrives, and as we walk across the road to meet her I can feel my heart beating so hard it's making me feel sick.

Brian takes my hand and gives me a look, so I smile at him as well as I can and try not to jump when Mom rings the doorbell.

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Brian

I can feel him ready to jump out of his skin beside me. I wish now I'd never got Jennifer to talk about this place and the guy who owns it. I should have known better. One look at his eyes in the restaurant and I knew he'd gone all soppy over the place before he'd even laid eyes on it.

Well...fuck it! If it's what he wants, who fucking cares why he wants it? We can buy it, and if he changes his mind, we'll just sell and buy something else. Whatever he wants. I don't care. As long as he's in the deal, I just don't care about the rest.

Meanwhile, we're standing here waiting to see if this guy is going to condescend to even let us see the place.

Fucker!

He finally opens the door and we're face to face with a walking corpse. He's tall, thin and beyond old, fucking ancient, 80 at least, with that prune look that the Brits seem so good at - as if he's simultaneously got a bad smell under his nose and a poker up his ass. I can feel myself bridling and instinctively, I move closer to Justin. If this guy thinks he can be rude to...Well, I'm not regarded as the consummate asshole for nothing.

Justin's nervous "Hi!" reminds me that I should work out the lay of the land though, before I go into asshole mode. If he really wants this house, I might have to fucking play nice to help him get it.

The guy, who Jenn introduces as Mr. Dickinson, just stares at Justin's hand and then he looks up and his eyes meet mine. There's no mistaking the hostility in them, and to be honest, it sets me back on my haunches a bit. I mean, what the fuck's his problem? I haven't even opened my mouth yet.

"You'd better come in," he says, as if the only thing less welcome would be root canal surgery.

We step through the small porch into a narrow hallway. It should be dark, but it's not, and it actually takes me a minute to realize why. The wall at the end, instead of being solid, is made of glass bricks. You can't see through them, but they let enough light into the hall to take away some of the closed in feeling that the narrow walls give the place.

He doesn't ask us where we want to start, or offer to let us wander around on our own, instead he just opens the door to the left, and we get a glimpse of what seems to be a small parlor or something. On the right is a study - library maybe. I get a glimpse of a hell of a lot of books, anyway. The rooms look okay, but they're small and the whole place so far has a pokey look that doesn't appeal at all. There's stairway down from the study, with a small bathroom tucked in behind it.

Dickinson grunts a word or two as he shows us each room. But you can tell he's not comfortable with us being here. He just wants us gone.

He stands almost blocking our way to the stairs, so we keep going down to the end of the hallway.

On the right, just before the glass bricks, there's an open archway into a formal dining room, the main body of which comes back towards the front of the house. Again it's small. At least the glass bricks continue along, forming the wall of the whole room, which prevents it from being dark as well; which it would be, because there are no other windows. We poke our heads in and see that there's another doorway right at the end of the bricks that leads out past them into what I suppose is the back of the house. I'm getting fucking curious now, as to what those bricks are hiding. But Dickinson is somehow past us, waving us back, and so we move to the room on the other side of the hall.

This time the archway leads into a kitchen. It's a big warm room, and I can tell Justin loves it. This room has huge side windows that give a glimpse of a lot of sky, but we're too curious now to even stop and look through. Again, the glass bricks continue along until at the end, just before the far wall, there's a doorway through.

But before we can get to it, Dickinson is there, in our faces, saying, "Well, you've seen enough. It's obviously not your kind of place. I'll see you ..."

And that's when he gets the full barrage of Justin's blue eyes turned on him, and has to watch as they slowly fill with tears.

I can't see them, but I can picture them, it's a sight I've seen more than enough - a reaction I've caused more than enough. I can hear how upset he is in the way he's breathing and can feel it in the way he reaches for my hand and clings to it.

"Please ..." he breathes, and I feel something knot inside me. He wants this, he fucking wants it, and I have to find a way to make this bastard let him have what he wants.

I search inside for the right approach, for the way to sell Justin, to sell us, to this guy as the buyers of his fucking house. I move forward a little, and feel Justin nestle closer to my side; I squeeze his hand and look up to find Dickinson looking not at Justin, but at me.

He just stands there for what seems like fucking forever, and then he gives the faintest ghost of a smile, that makes him look even more of a corpse, and stands aside. I give him a glance as we pass him, trying to work out what he's thinking. Then, for a moment, I forget him entirely.

We walk along the wall, and through the archway into...light. Fucking amazing light.

And space.

Fuck this space is huge!

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Justin

It's amazing. Beautiful and amazing and I have to fucking live here. I have to.

It's like the front half of the house is like it used to be when it was built, a number of small, dark rooms. But here...

There are no rooms, its just space.

And light.

The wall to the left is all windows. So is the wall in front of us. Or rather, the bottom half seems to be huge sliding doors made mainly of glass. The top...oh, my God! the top!

And that's when I realize. That's when I know whom Mr. Dickinson used to live with.

"William Arkwright!" I breathe.

"What?" Brian asks.

I'm taking a breath to tell him that the guy who designed the stained glass windows that stretch above the glass doors, right to the high arched rafters of the roof could only be William Arkwright, when a hoarse voice answers for me.

"That's right. My Billy designed those."

I turn to him, my eyes brimming again.

"They're..." I break off. There aren't words. Words are totally inadequate for the wonder of color and light that "his Billy" has created here.

To my astonishment he gives me a little smile, and then nods, as if he's heard perfectly all the things I can't find words for.

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Brian

O-kay. So the guy he used to live with was some sort of designer, or craftsman. Something of the sort, anyway. And if he designed these windows he was a fucking good one. Somewhere in the caverns of my mind, there's an echo of a memory and I finally manage to track it down.

Of course! William Arkwright. He was a designer, and a sculptor. But he specialized in glass. He designed glassware that was so beautiful it would be criminal to use it, and almost as much of a sin not to. I remember seeing a glass coffee table he'd made once. The legs were like tree trunks - literally, thick and veined and twisted with knots that looked so real you'd swear you could smell the wood and then at the top they branched to form the base for the table top to rest on; and the table top was green, all different shades of green, seemingly woven out of intertwined leaves, all hand-crafted out of glass.

Not my style at all, but fuck! it was beautiful.

I stare up at the windows.

And then I look around the room. And finally manage to make sense of what I'm seeing.

It's as if they've cut the house in half.

In the front half, they've left all the original rooms.

Here, they've taken out everything, even the upstairs floor, opening it out completely to one amazing space.

I glance across to the other end of the room and smile as I see a huge fucking fireplace. I look up again at the windows, and realize that our rug, the rug I'd bought for our first house, would work well here, in front of the fire. The colors would glow in the light from those windows, and would bring the colors of the windows into the room.

For a moment, I'm distracted, picturing Justin spread out on the rug. Then, for the first time, I look out through the clear glass doors to what's beyond.

There's decking that runs right across the back of the house, and below that the land must fall away, because I can see only a glimpse of green between the deck and the river which shines below us. I walk over, and peer through the window. There's a series of rock garden terraces with a path going down through them and past those there's a gentle grass slope, stretching down to the riverbank. At the end there's some sort of wooden jetty, even a boat tied to it. Just a small one. I know fuck all about boats, but I guess it makes sense if you have a place like this to have one. I think of taking off down the cool of the river on hot humid Pittsburgh nights, and it's a damned appealing thought.

I turn around and look back into that amazing room, and realize for the first time that the wall above the glass bricks, the wall of what must be at least one of the bedrooms upstairs, is in fact a window. So the rooms up there would look out to this space, with its light and color and the view of the river beyond.

Suddenly, I want to get up there, I want to see. I look around for Justin. He's standing with Dickinson, talking to him. There are no tears now, he's all animation. They must be talking arty stuff. I walk up and get one of those blinding smiles. He practically throws himself at me.

"Do you like it?" he asks.

I hesitate for a moment, about to play down my amazement and the fucked up feeling I have that somehow this house was made for Justin and I. I'm about to shrug it off, when I look at him and realize that I can't. I can't do anything to dull that fucking glow.

So I just nod. He'll know what that means.

He does, too, because he laughs with delight and turns to Dickinson as if he's known him for years. "That means he loves it," he says, smiling so fucking brightly that it makes even this room look dim by comparison.

I'm about to try for some sort of dignity, something, by commenting on how hard it must be to keep the place warm in Pittsburgh's winters with all that fucking glass, when Dickinson totally blows me out of the water, by smiling at Justin like he's his favorite nephew or something and then taking his hand and pulling it through his arm, like he's in some old fucking movie.

"Let me show you upstairs," he says.

Jenn and I exchange looks behind him. I can tell she's excited. Maybe no one else has got as far as being taken upstairs.

"I'll wait down here," she says, obviously not wanting to jinx anything or spook him.

So the three of us make our way up the narrow little staircase.

Upstairs is, in some ways, a lot like the front of the house downstairs. Another narrow hallway running from the front of the house to the dividing wall. On one side of the hall there's the stairwell, with a bathroom behind it. At the front of the house on that side is a tiny bedroom, and on the other side of the stairwell is the guest bedroom, which is a reasonable size, I guess.

The other side of the house is taken up entirely with the master bedroom its bathroom. What makes it different from downstairs is that here, there are no opaque glass bricks forming the end wall, there are clear glass windows, so the hallway, and the two bedrooms all look directly across to the stained glass, and down to the room below, and the glass doors onto the deck.

By now, I'm starting to get curious about the engineering. I mean, some of these should be load-bearing walls.

While Justin unabashedly kneels on the floor at the foot of the huge bed and peers through the glass to the stained glass windows immediately opposite him, Dickinson smiles at me.

"Reinforced steel," he says.

I raise an eyebrow.

"All the main structure is reinforced with steel," he elaborates. We did all this over forty years ago, and it's as solid now as the day we moved in. You don't have to worry about it falling down on his pretty blond head."

I feel uncomfortable with that comment, which he picks up on and for some reason it makes him laugh, a hoarse sound, as if he hasn't had much practice at it lately.

"Let him wander around, and we'll go downstairs and I'll show you some of the house's other features that you'll want to know about."

Justin has got that "I really wish I had my sketchbook" look, so I leave him there, soaking in the color and light and follow Dickinson downstairs.

We find Jennifer in the kitchen.

"You can go," Dickinson tells her bluntly. "We'll let you know if we need you."

She stares at him for a moment and then says, a little anxiously, "Justin?"

I smile at her. "Upstairs enjoying the view. Memorizing it, if I know him. He'll be painting all fucking night by the looks of it."

Dickinson gives me a sharp look, and I think that he's pissed off at the thought of Justin mimicking his lover's designs. I can respect that.

"He'll just want to catch the feel of them," I tell him. "It won't be like a photo image. It will be about how he sees them, how they make him feel."

Jenn mumbles something about "Well, if you're sure", and I nod at her, encouraging her to go.

It seems like Dickinson may be willing to talk turkey, if I can refrain from fucking it up.

She walks out and he rubs his hands together.

"Let's have coffee," he says, and starts to make it. I stand leaning against the table feeling fucking awkward if the truth be known, until he growls at me to sit down.

"You don't have to worry about the heating," he says, as if we'd been discussing what I'd only been thinking. "The central heating is very efficient, and the glass itself is heated, so you don't have to worry about running around like a lot of brass monkeys looking for a welder, no matter how cold it gets."

I stare at him. He gives me a grin over his shoulder. "I'm an engineer, Mr...er..."

"Brian," I say automatically. "Brian Kinney."

"Brian," he says. Then, the coffee at last on the go, he turns and holds out his hand. "Dan," he says. I shake it and as I look into his eyes, I'm surprised to see in them warmth and sympathy and something that looks very like amusement. The look becomes even more pronounced, when we hear Justin thumping down the stairs, and his eager, "Brian!"

"In here," I answer automatically.

He bounds in and throws himself down next to me, reaching over to take my hand and then leaning in even further for a kiss.

"It's amazing, isn't it? I mean, you really do like it, don't you?"

I pull my lips between my teeth and then Dickinson ...Dan...laughs.

"You might as well give in to it," he says. "It's what he wants, and that means you want it for him."

I bite my lip. I don't like anyone being able to read me like this, especially someone who can gouge me for my last dollar to try to get Justin what he wants.

Dan laughs and actually fucking pats me on the shoulder.

"It was the same for me," he says. "Whatever Billy wanted, I never could bring myself to say `no' to him."

Then he sighs, "Well, not after I pulled my head out of my arse and admitted he was all I wanted, anyway."

He turns then, and takes some time to get cups and cream and all that shit. Justin gets up to help him, and asks softly, "Were you together for a long time?"

Dan sighs again, and gesturing for Justin to fetch the coffee, he sits down. "Sixty years, just on," he says.

Justin puts the coffee on the table, and draws his chair closer to mine as he sits down.

Dan looks at him and smiles. "He was a lot like you. Well, dark, where you're fair, but the same deep blue eyes, the same...smile. The same way of looking at me as if ..."

He turns his head to me then, "And you are a lot like me, maybe. Too bloody proud and stubborn for your own good, but ... " his eyes drift to Justin for a moment and then back to me.

"Well, you've your own road to travel, and it might not be an easy one. Nothing worth having was ever all that easy. At least not for me."

Justin tilts his head at him, and says bluntly, "We want the house. We want to travel our journey together in this house."

Dan nods. "I know you do."

Then, with a mocking look at me as if he knew what I'd think of it, he goes on, "I've been keeping it for you. I knew you'd find your way here sooner or later."

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