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I hear the bang of the slide door slamming shut. This can mean the only thing – Brian is angry. It’s followed by the sound of his crocodile leather briefcase slopping against the hardwood floors. This means that he is pissed off. I watch him from the bedroom. He carelessly throws his cashmere coat on the back of the couch. This means he is furious.
I lie in our bed, hardly able to lift up my head. Don’t even ask me why. Because to say I feel bad is to say nothing. I am ruined, devastated, fucked up, whatever. I can’t breathe, or move a limb, or utter a word. I can only crawl deeper under the blanket and keep silent. Which is not so easy considering my sneezing every two minutes. A running nose and smarting eyes contribute to the picture of Justin A. Taylor-Kinney in all his beauty. ‘A’ stands for ‘allergic’ though Brian prefers a different interpretation. He hasn’t got laid in three days - since I got the allergic reaction; three days without sex is an eternity for Brian.
I’m exhausted; close to suicidal I’d say. I'd have committed suicide long ago but the only place I have enough strength to reach right now is our bedside table. And it's not this easy to cut wrists with a 10 inch dildo or hang yourself on a string of beads. So I make a decision to leave the idea for better (or worse) times.
I can hear Brian kick off his shoes against the wall. I try to bury myself deeper; the pillows over my head are my only asylum now. I squeeze my eyes shut; like when I was a child and believed that if I didn’t see people, they couldn’t see me either. Deep down in my soul I hope Brian won’t find me in my shelter. He’ll just flop down beside me and fall asleep. Or de-virginize the bottle of JB covered by the sands of time in the bar. Brian Kinney of pre-Brian Kinney-Taylor era would leave for Babylon, find some trick, and fuck the irritation out of his system. Anything from Brian Fucking Kinney’s pain management arsenal that would do the trick.
Fat chance! I peep out from under the pillow as he changes with his back to me, the muscles tense, the air thick with frustration. He looks devastatingly beautiful in the worn out jeans and black vest, though the image is grotesque, the silhouette blurred as I look at him with my teary eyes. I crave to jump out of bed, snake my arms around his waist, rest my forehead between his shoulder blades, and never let him go. I sniffle.
He heads out of the bedroom, now I can only hear him booting up the computer, the printer buzzing. Brian getting to work right after work is another dangerous sign. I sigh and sneeze. Now I wonder if it is an auditory hallucination, or maybe the pillows corrupt the sound, or maybe his ‘Bless you!’ really does sound more like ‘Fuck you!’ I snuggle my face deeper under the pillow.
I don’t want to show up from under the pillow for two reasons: the light is too bright, the straight sun rays seem to needle right into my brain, and I don’t want Brian to see me like this. Until I’m kissable and fuckable again I am not leaving my sanctuary.
I hate that I cannot hear him moving around the loft. Brian always moves soundlessly, delicately, feline. I feel the mattress beside me dip under his weight. I move to inhale a complex Brian mixture of sex, cigarettes, cologne, sex, mint, lust, sex, love, and Thai. Have I mentioned sex?
Then there is nothing for a long moment. I cautiously open one eye to see his face inches from mine. I wink. He mirrors the motion.
“Hi,” he says.
“Hi,” I exhale and let my eyelids drop.
I can feel his hot breath on my face. His lips touch my forehead, move down to my cheek, then to my mouth. He doesn’t kiss me. We just lie silent for minutes, his lips brushing mine, the touch soft and dry. We inhale each other, share the same air, exchange our bodies’ warmth. His lips move against my warm cheek. He smiles. I feel that he relaxes little by little, annoyance oozing slowly away through his pores. He cups my cheek with his palm which I willingly and immediately nestle into.
I know the reason for his shitty mood perfectly well. Because I know him. Living with Brian Kinney for seven years is an ordeal but I’ve learned a lot. He's scared. He hates it when I’m sick. Because he's afraid of hospitals. Not that he doesn't have reasons. He does. Plenty of them.
I feel a suspicious tickling in my nose. Fuck! Now I’m going to cry. I’m a melting mess when sick. Brian says that me being sick is a thousand times worse than a pregnant lesbian. (He has his own hierarchy on the question. It goes like this: women, pregnant women, munchers, pregnant munchers, me. Why don’t I feel happier about being on top here?)
He fishes a pack of Kleenex out of his pocket and stuffs it into my palm.
I don’t want him to see my tears. I try to turn my head away to look if maybe there is anything new on the ceiling but he doesn’t let me, cupping my chin rather firmly. I wait for his I-told-you-not-to-devour-everything-you-can-get-hold-of look, and it is there, but there is also something else. Something that makes my blood shot eyes close in the effort to shed the unwelcomed moisture. The side of Brian only I know. The side he only lets me see.
He's an open book to me now. But fuck if it wasn't heart-bleedingly hard to learn to read the hieroglyphs of the Kinney manuscript. I still seem to be the only one who succeeded in the field.
But how could I forget for a nanosecond that the man beside me is Brian Kinney. He obviously doesn’t want to be this readable. At least you’ll never get an admission out of him.
As if to prove my thoughts right, he starts his great performance of queening out.
“Jesus Christ, Sunshine!” He throws the used ball of napkin into a trash can. He sounds irritated but is not disgusted. “What if it is a serious disease?” He frowns and screws his face. “What if it is contagious?” I roll my eyes. My husband is a drama queen!
“What do you think it is? Ebola? Pig flu? It’s just allergies, Brian. And you know it.” I hear the remote sound of my voice but don’t recognize it. It sounds like I have a cotton dab in my nose. I notice a sheet of paper beside Brian. He takes it, pushes my shoulder with his finger until I lie flat on my back, and hangs over me with the paper in one hand and a pen in the other, his lips rolled into his mouth.
“Well, well, well. What exactly do you complain of, Mr.Taylor? ” He utters raising an eyebrow.
“Mr. Taylor-Kinney.” I correct him.
“Huh?”
“It's Taylor-Kinney.” I emphasize his part of my name. I have this brilliant idea to pout a little for good measure, but I’m too pleased with the sound of my name so I just grin sheepishly instead.
“So, what do we have here, Mr. Taylor-Kinney?” He parrots my intonation. I see unmistakably the dancing devils in his huge eyes. Brian is on a mission. And when he is, there's approximately the same chance to stop him as there is to stop a speeding train with your bare hands. He leans in closer. “Puffy eyes.” Brian starts declaring his list out loud. “Definitely.” He pokes at the eyebags, and puts a tick at the top of his list.
“Smarting eyes.” He goes on with the scrutiny, then brings his face so close to mine I can feel his hot breath on my lips. I lick my lips instinctively craving a kiss. He pecks my lips. Then his lips touch my forehead. The same way my mom did to test the temperature when I was a child.
“You are hot.” He says. And adds after another soft touch, “Too warm, I mean.” I pout a little though understand perfectly well that I’m not the sexiest guy right now.
He returns to the task at hand and lifts my eyelid with his fingertip. I struggle to blink, the light too bright for my sore eyes. My eyes water.
“Hives.” Brian announces. He pulls down the blanket teasingly slow, revealing my feverish skin to the cool air of the loft and his hungry eyes. I feel like a rare specimen, some exotic bug pinned to an entomologist’s cushion. Brian examines me thoroughly, his eyes travel from the tips of my hair to the toe nails. I can do nothing but watch him watching me.
“Roll over.” He growls, his voice low and throaty.
God! How do these words always find the shortest way from Brian’s mouth to my dick? They have the same effect on me as a bell on a Pavlovian dog: I’m drooling.
Though…
“No.” I whine in protest. I can’t even move not to mention fuck. “Dr. Kinney…”
He raises his eyebrow.
I clear my throat. “Dr. Taylor-Kinney. Bri-”
He cuts off my whining with his index finger over my lips. “Shhh. Just roll over.” His soothing whisper makes me move with a moan hardly audible.
His eyes study my body, his hands follow his scanning eyes, barely touching my aching skin. He puts a tick in front of ‘hives’ having found two red spots right under my knees.
“Here we go.” He commented almost satisfactorily. I start to suspect he somehow enjoys the examination.
The touch of his hand makes the itch almost unbearable. I scrape my skin furiously. “Are you experiencing any itching, Justin?” He grins and makes the mark in his paper. I ask him, almost beg him to fuck off. He complies.
Or rather has to get up and find his ringing cell phone. I sigh with relief. Then frown. I never heard of auditory hallucinations being the symptoms of allergies. Do I hear what I think I hear? Queen’s “Mama”? Mrs. Kinney?
Brian finds his phone in the briefcase. I see him raise his eyebrow and a soft smile touches his lips as he looks at the caller ID.
“Yes, Mother Taylor.” Mom?! Holy shit! Since when does she call Brian BEFORE she calls me? Is it a conspiracy? I note to myself that, when sick, I’m not only overly touchy but also overly suspicious.
“Hi,” Brian says. “Yeah, I’m home. Not much work these days, you know.” Aha. He always has tons of work. But he takes care of me now. I sigh thinking of the other ‘doctor - patient’ game we could play.
Brian sits on the arm of the couch, and taps the pen against the couch’s back. “Yes, we have everything we need. Even food, Jenifer.” He enunciates last sentence. I smile, remembering Brian coming home yesterday with huge paper bags with groceries, cursing like a sailor, mumbling something about ‘Brian Kinney buying Cheerios’, and ‘Whence the long lines? Great Depression?’
The talk goes on. “Yes, he takes his medicine. Yes, he stays in bed. Yes, he drinks a lot. Too much sometimes.” Last sentence is said in a voice a pitch quieter though. Will he ever forget that little threesome debauchery? The threesome actually involved me, Daph, and Mary (the Bloody one).
I don’t remember coming home that night, breaking everything breakable on the kitchen counter, throwing up, hugging the toilet for the dearest life, making myself comfortable to pass away right there. But Brian wouldn’t be his usual smartass self if he didn’t recount everything to me the next morning, savoring each and every detail.
He mocked me, laughed at me, pretended to be pissed off, but I knew better when, after waking up I saw that the loft was clean, and I was tucked under his arm, all new and shiny. (Let me not mention the most head-cracking hangover ever, which Brian, by the way, fucked out of me in a matter of minutes.)
“What? No, nothing. Never mind.” He smiles. “Oh, the medicine… Don’t get me wrong, Jennifer, but…Are you sure you got pregnant naturally? Isn’t your son a result of a medical experiment? Or an aliens’ gift?” I practically see mom’s facial expression. The one that people in shock have when the air suddenly seems to be lacking oxygen. Brian elaborates. “Why? Because nobody, like NOBODY is allergic to Tylenol. But your son is. So I thought why not ask.” After my mother’s reply he said, “Of course, you can come and see him. And we really don’t need anything, Jennifer.”
He’s ready to disconnect the call when he suddenly slaps his forehead with his hand. “Oh, Jennifer, I just remembered – we are out of condoms. Could you please buy us a pack. Nothing special. We don’t usually use studded or ribbed ones. Yes, lubed and hypoallergenic. Thanks. Bye.”
I jump in the bed. I feel the air stuck in my lungs, threatening to tear them apart. It takes me minutes to find my voice. “What the hell?!” I yell. I think I can rip him a new asshole right now.
“What? She can easily buy them on her way here.” He gives me the most innocent smile.
I gasp for air opening my mouth like a fish out of water, and squeeze my fists. I don’t fucking know what to say. “Brian, you are… you are so…” I’m not even sure I have the right epithet in my vocabulary. The man is indescribable.
He sees me working myself into an asthma attack, and takes pity on me, “Cool down, princess, I hung up before the ‘condoms’.” Asshole!
I go back to the pillows. He joins me there, another piece of paper in his hand.
“What’s this?” I’m sure I won’t survive another examination.
“It’s a list of allergens.”
“I know what I’m allergic to.” I begin to realize what he is doing. He is trying to distract me. Not the favorite technique, but it does help.
“Really?” He raises his eyebrow, his tone mocking. “Share. What’s it this time?”
I stay silent. I don’t know.
“What? Nothing to say? Then I’ll tell you – you never know. Last time it was mustard. And before that it was my mint shampoo. Who the hell is allergic to shampoos? You’re the fucking exception to every rule, Sunshine!”
Aha. Look how many of your rules I broke, Brian Kinney. I smirk self-confidently. I watch him, wait for an outburst, but he averts his eyes and scrapes the back of his head. Speak of rules, Brian.
Brian places himself on the foot of the bed. He sits cross-legged, his elbows on his knees.
“So, Doc, spill your brilliant ideas.” I want to finish whatever we are doing now, nestle under his arm, and have some rest.
“You’d better take me serious. I’m trying to find the root of the evil.” Like I didn’t notice.
“Well, it says…” he shakes the paper, “that one of the most common allergens is … ‘dust mite excretion’? Ew, God!” He screws his face. “Are they trying to say that some disgusting insects shit in the loft?”
“No, they are trying to say people should clean up. And the loft is crystal clean, Brian.”
He nods but doesn’t look convinced. I wouldn’t be surprised if people from the cleaning company come twice a day from now on.
Meanwhile my ‘doctor’ goes on. “Pollen.” He smirks. “You see, Sunshine, that’s why I never give you flowers.”
“I never asked for them.” I say and practically bite my tongue to blood.
Obviously the same recollections come to his mind. Brian stares at me, his eyes the darkest hue of black. “You used to.” It still bugs him.
I don’t have the tiniest desire to touch the topic. “It was years ago. In my previous life. I was young and stupid.”
“Nothing but your age has changed.” Mocking me? Another Kinney tactic to avoid pain. But he seems to agree not to recall the adventures of my rather fucked up youth and goes on. “Pet dander.” He pauses and looks at me grinning.
“Don’t you even start, Brian.” I warn him.
“Don’t YOU even start, Justin. Next time you and Gus start whining about some ‘oh-so-cute kitty’ or ‘what-a-charming puppy’ I’ll just…”
I don’t let him continue. “We won’t. I already promised.”
“Good.” He replies and continues. “Food allergies.” That’s my weak point. I’m almost twenty five but still eat like a growing teenager.
“Peanuts?” He raises his eyebrow.
I shake my head.
“Not a tiny bite of a sandwich with peanut butter stolen from Gus?” He inquires suspiciously.
“I swear.”
“Nuts?”
A shake.
“Seafood?”
“No.” Why ask if he knows perfectly well that I eat nothing different than what he does. On weekdays we have breakfast in the loft, lunch at the diner, and usually order something in for dinner. On weekends, when in Britin, I do the cooking.
“Wasp, ant, bee stings.” He doesn’t even try to mask his laughter.
“Stop it!” I beg.
“Penicillin.”
I roll my eyes and shake my head.
“Latex.”
We both lift our eyes and freeze. Then whisper in unison, “Condoms.”
We reach the drawer simultaneously. He grabs the box, fishes out an item, and studies the package.
“Where the hell were you looking, Sunshine, buying them?! They are not hypoallergenic!” He bursts out.
“But they are flavored, and I thought…” I mumble.
“You thought? Oh, no, you didn’t! What do you need flavored condoms for? They’re not ice cream, for Christ’s sake!” he yells. He is angry. Really angry.
His shouting at me stings my raw nerves. I feel tears well in my eyes and pour down my cheeks.
Brian rolls his eyes but crawls closer to me. He cups my face with his large warm hands, thumbing away the tears, drying them with his lips. All this breaks the dam, and the humanity is under the threat of a second Deluge.
“Shhh. Not the waterworks, Sunshine.” His voice is warm and soothing. “Don’t do this to me. You’ll trigger my own allergies.”
It strikes me. I lift my head and sniffle. “You don’t have allergies.”
“I do. I’m allergic to your crying.” He smiles.
I smile back. I hardly manage, the smile weak and lopsided, but I don’t care right now.
Brian pulls off his vest and dives under the blanket. He kisses me, with the very Kinney limb-numbing brain-boiling skin-burning kiss. My mind goes blank. My hands fly over the silky skin of his back. His muscles ripple beneath my fingers. I don’t want to open my eyes. All I want is to touch him, feel him.
His long lean body stretches along mine. I feel him relaxing by my side. His long fingers sneak under my pants. I close my eyes and try to remember to breathe. His lips never leave my temple as well as his hand doesn't leave my cock. He pumps me with steady strokes, his lips drawing whispery words over my skin. “I fucking hate your allergies, Justin. I fucking hate you being sick.” He rocks his hips pressing himself against my thigh. The sensation, like everything that has to do with the man, drives me insane.
“Brian, please…” I whisper. God, I am dying without him inside me.
He says nothing, just shakes his head. I raise my brow in question. I’m not sure if I should feel offended.
He must have read it in my eyes. “You’re too weak.” He tucks a strand of my hair behind my ear never averting his eyes. “And there is no way I can take it easy.”
He fastens his ministrations. His lips on my face, his fingers on my cock, his cock against my thigh, his ‘Fucking missed you’, my ‘Oh, God, fuck, Brian!’ – that’s all that it takes for me to say farewell to reality.
I watch Brian rock his hips, his eyes closed, his lips parted. The view is hypnotizing. Five growls later Brian joins me in bliss.
He lies sprawled half on top of me. He won’t look at me. I know he’s embarrassed. Brian Fucking Kinney can’t be this easy. His chestnut head nestles under my chin, his long fingers glide over my damp skin which is surprisingly free of pain.
I brush his hair. It is longish now. Brian needs a haircut. I wrap a strand around my finger. Or he doesn’t. I don’t care. It is Brian. No matter how long his hair is.
My thoughts stumble. I’m drifting away when I hear him whispering, “I want us get tested.”
I have no strength left to feel shocked. I told you – this is Brian. First he didn’t do boyfriends, then he didn’t do partners, then he didn’t do husbands. Now he doesn’t do it raw. Go figure. This is my husband, Brian Taylor-Kinney.