"What if ..." 
Justin hadn’t gone back to the office after he kissed Brian when Brian fired 


xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 


“Grow some balls, grow some balls, grow some balls” his own words a mantra in his head over and over and over, until he thought he was going to go crazy. Brian sat in his dark office reliving the two minutes and forty three seconds leading up to Justin’s kiss. The endless twenty seconds when Justin laid his claim once again, the eternity when Justin walked out the door of Vanguard. It was as if he’d stood in a corner and video taped it and now it was playing on an endless loop in his brain. 


Brian looked at the time where it glowed on the bottom of his computer screen. Seven in the evening and he was still sitting, paralyzed in his office. “Grow some balls, grow some balls, grow some balls.” Why couldn’t he listen to his own words? If he’d managed to grow a pair a few months ago, Justin would be at home waiting for him. He would have someone to come home too, to talk too, to hold in the night. 


Brian sighed as the mantra kept repeating. He picked up his phone, his finger hovering over the speed dial number of the man he craved. He almost hit it when he realized that once again he’d be hiding. Only this time behind a telephone. “Grow some balls, grow some balls.” He stood up from his desk, and before he could change his mind he grabbed his coat, rushing out of the deserted office complex and down the stairs, not wanting to use the elevator. It was too much to expect him to stand there for the eighty seconds it would take to reach the lobby. 


Thankful that his car would be warm in the parking garage, he got in and started it, trying not to speed out from under the building and into the icy street. ‘Grow some balls, grow some balls, grow some balls.” The words of the mantra were louder in his brain. The ten minute trip to the seedy apartment building took forever in his mind. He pulled the ‘vette up onto the sidewalk, not caring that he damn near hit a overturned garbage can. He raced into the building and up the four flights of urine scented stairs only to remember at the last moment, before his hand hit the paint crazed door that Justin was living with Daphne now. 


Back down the stairs and into his car, he peeled rubber anxious to escape the contamination of where he’d just been. He calmed his breathing enough to almost clear his head of the never ending mantra as he raced the icy streets to Daphne’s apartment building. Once again the car mounted the curb and once again he raced for the main doors only this time he had to wait impatiently for someone to answer the buzzer. 


He kept his finger on it until Justin’s voice came over the intercom loud and clear. “Who ever you are FUCK OFF” 


“Justin, wait it’s me, let me in.” Brian panted 


“Brian?” Justin’s voice tentative and surprised. “Is that you? Are you drunk?” 


“No I’m not drunk. Justin I need to talk to you now.” Brian’s voice had lost it’s bravado, he faltered on the last words. 


His answer was the harsh sound of the door being released. He caught the door and opened it immediately as if afraid that Justin would change his mind. His heart was beating so fast he could feel the swish of his own blood as it raced past is ears and he wondered if he was going to have a stroke from too many cigarettes. A fitting end to stroke out at the moment of truth, a true drama queen to the last. 


Brian stood just inside the foyer, afraid to move, terrified to move, because right now, right that very moment, he was going to give away his seldom, if ever used, love and trust and Justin could very well have moved on. 


And then he was there, standing right in front of him, his blond hair mussed up as if he’d been sleeping, his feet bare, an old pair of two large sweat pants on – so that’s where they went – Justin stood there five feet away from him. The blue eyes looked deeply into Brian’s hazel ones and Justin did the only thing he could do under the circumstance. He held his arms open wide and smiled his trademark smile. And like a child taking his first steps, Brian put one foot in front of the other until he was enveloped in those arms full of love and he could whisper “I love you Justin Taylor.”