Warnings: None
He knew that snooping was impolite. Just as he knew that eavesdroppers never heard anything good about themselves. He wished he had followed those rules. He wished he hadn't looked. He wished he hadn't heard.
Brian had lain down some very simple rules when Justin came to live with him. Pick up after himself, don't be rude to his mother and there were certain places in the loft that were private. Among those named was Brian's drug drawer, his email, his Internet profiles, his work files and the drawer. Well, Brian hadn't actually named the drawer as a place in and of itself. It was lumped in with his work files, being in the cabinet he used to store work materials.
But Justin knew from previous stays at the flat that this particular drawer held a well-organized treasure trove of Brian's history and cherished memories. There were files labeled for "Gus", "Lynsey" and "Mikey." There were folders for "College" and "Family" that contained pictures and letters of people that he had never met or even heard of. There was even a folder shared by "Emmett and Ted" and another for "Melanie." Justin bet they would all be surprised by that.
Justin's favorites, though, were the new folder labeled for himself and the folders with old pictures of Brian. The latter being more informative than the few pictures Michael had left in his old room along with his high school yearbooks.
Today, however, it wasn't those folders that drew him to use Brian's key to open the cabinet. Today it was the section labeled "Mikey" that drew him into this breach of trust.
Living with Brian had, as Justin had hoped, opened up a whole new view into Brian's life and psyche. Not everything he saw, however, was what he had hoped. Justin still had enough youthful confidence to believe that he could work on Brian and get him to where he wanted - in a monogamous relationship. He had no doubt that Brian cared deeply about him and that would only grow over time. What Justin hadn't counted on was real competition.
Upon first meeting Michael, Justin had assumed that Michael was some pathetic acolyte following Brian around in the hopes of collecting crumbs of his affection. Of finally getting fully jerked off. It wasn't until Michael's birthday party and Brian's subsequent breakdown that Justin started to realize how much Michael meant to Brian. How much Brian depended on his "Mikey". Justin naively hoped that Brian would come to need him even more.
Justin was just coming to realize that their relationship was more than old habit, even more than need, but that there was genuine affection. They talked all the time, multiple times a day according to Cynthia. Hardly a night went by that they didn't talk, that is when they weren't hanging out together. The distance between them when Michael moved in with David and when Justin moved in with Brian was apparently the aberration, not the rule, as Justin had believed.
Like the kiss on the lips at Michael's birthday party. Justin had thought it was just Brian's way to making the push be all that more effective when it came. Justin was just learning it too was part of the relationship between the friends.
Justin had overheard Ted and Emmett talking about it at the diner that morning after Brian and Michael had left. About the kisses, about the renewed closeness, about their relationship growing and maturing in a way that Emmett never thought would happen and Ted was trying to refute. But Justin saw the truth in what Emmett was saying.
Little by little things he had ignored as insignificant started to take on meaning. Like, for instance, Brian and Michael snapping at each other. If Brian had spoken to him like that, Justin knew he was cringe and wait to be thrown out. But between the two older men it just seemed to roll off their backs. It pissed them off, they even seemed to listen to the words, but then it was just gone.
Justin wanted to look back at the pictures and see if he saw something new. And he got what he was looking for. For the first time he was seeing that it wasn't just Michael looking at Brian in an adoring manner. Brian was looking back at Michael in just the same way. Justin knew that look, being the recipient of a similar look himself lately. And the touches, they were all there in his hands. Brian with his arm around his smaller friend. Brian holding his friend's hand. Brian the obvious aggressor in horseplay.
Just as Brian admitted to being the first to touch Michael sexually back almost before Justin was born.
The most damning to Justin were the new pictures. Pictures that Justin had heard about second hand during a raucous breakfast that morning. Pictures that Brian had taken in the loft to help Michael attract a new man, a man that wasn't that total hottie Ben who was HIV positive.
Justin was an artist and, though Brian would never consider it, Brian's photography hobby was Brian's art. And it was with an artist's eye that Justin looked at these photographs. In them he saw Michael as Brian meant him to be seen, as Brian himself saw Mikey. As an incredibly sexy man. Sexy and loved by the photographer.
Justin wished he hadn't snooped. Wished he hadn't heard.
The End