Schmoop ahoy. I just cannot stop myself. It's like a fucking disease. The actual events could have happened pre-S5, though I'm imagining post-season 5. I don't think it counts as spoilery.

Um, also, I think someone might have mentioned glass art in a recent QAF fic. I don't think I stole anything, but my subconscious is a sneaky bastard and pockets all kinds of images and so if it is too close to something (though I can't figure out what it could be) I apologize. A lot. I looked, I swear.

For now it stands, though. Pointing out typos is a good thing, as always. And don't be afraid to tell me it was too sappy for you. I just wrote it before I left work and I'm still unsure about the sap level. A story is never done.


"Thanks for coming with me," said Justin. He unwrapped his purchase, his shoes and coat still on.

"I wanted to go." Brian watched him for a minute before heading over to the fireplace. Justin glanced at him skeptically, but apparently decided to believe him. And Brian had wanted to go. But not because his life would have been incomplete without seeing a glass art fair. He'd wanted to go because Justin wanted to go and Justin was really fascinating to watch when he was looking at art.

He got this manic gleam in his eye and a sort of slow flush up his neck like when he was high. He acted, just a little bit, like the seventeen-year-old Justin. The one that had been enthusiastic about everything. He talked a mile a minute about all the pieces and looked intensely up into Brian's face, open and intelligent and passionate. He would grab Brian's arm as if he owned it and go marching off to another stall, where wonder would break all over his face again. It turned Brian on. Luckily, Justin was always willing to fuck in the bathroom (or behind a tree, or in the car...) whenever the mood struck them. Or rather, whenever Brian couldn't take it any more.

Now they were home. When Brian noticed he could see his breath steaming inside their apartment, he went to the fireplace and carefully lit newspaper and bits of wood and then made sure it caught on the log. Their heater was going full-blast, but it didn't do much.

In another month Justin's lease would expire and this little deal he'd made with Justin would be over, and he'd move them into a penthouse so fast Justin's head would spin. Until then, he would make the best of it. And there was some part of him he refused to even acknowledge that recognized this place as cozy. And god forbid, romantic. And maybe something like what Justin had wanted and didn't get from Ethan.

"Where are your flowers?" asked Justin. Brian didn't answer. He didn't trust himself for two reasons: He might say something really, unforgivably sarcastic and not get laid tonight. Or he might have some other unfavorable, emotional reaction. How was he to know that Justin was going to buy him flowers? How the hell was he supposed to react to that?

"Oh, here they are," said Justin. They'd been in one of the shopping bags Brian had carried up. "It's a good thing I bought this vase, or we'd have to put them in one of the only two cups." The rest of their stuff was in storage waiting, just like Brian was, for the penthouse.

The fire caught nicely, and Brian retreated to the couch, which was the one concession Justin made in their deal--Brian's couch came with Brian. He watched Justin put the flowers into the giant purple vase, made of twisted glass and shiny parts and odd flecks. The artist had said it was a beautiful fuck-up. Justin had bought it on the spot. Justin had a thing for beautiful fuck-ups.

"Come here," he said.

"First just let me put the dishes away--they've been in the dishwasher for, like, a week." Justin made a face. "And I told my mom I'd call her when I got back. Oh! My cell is still off."

"Leave it like that. Come here first. Just for a few minutes." Brian extended a hand over the back of the couch. Justin looked at him, paused, and smiled. He came around the couch and, shedding his coat, he stretched himself out on top of, next to, against Brian. "Breathe," Brian said. And Justin relaxed against him, his deep breath tickling Brian's neck on the way out.

Moving, waving light from the fire and the afternoon sun painted their bodies in stripes of light. It picked out Justin's highlights and made one of his ears nearly transparent. Brian kissed it before he could help himself. He didn't want to help himself. Justin smiled into his neck and relaxed even further.

They lay like that until the sun had sunk below the window, until their breathing had unconsciously synchronized, until the fire had climbed up into the chimney and made the room liveably warm.

"I'm going to paint," said Justin, suddenly.

"Did all those men blowing," he lifted his eyebrows wickedly, "glass inspire you, Sunshine?"

Justin pushed up so he could roll his eyes at Brian. They grinned at each other until Justin rolled to his feet.

He dragged his easel out from the corner, set it up next to the fire and got out his paints. Brian stayed still, dividing his attention between drousily watching the fire and Justin paint.

It took him a while to figure out that it was him--no, them in the painting. It took him even longer, squinting in the light from the fire, to see that they were made of glass, twisting together, fire all around them. It called up something nameless and odd in him but he was sleepy enough not to fight it.

Brian remembered a time when the events of today would have been unthinkable to him. When this scene, in front of a fire, in a place that was both of theirs, was so farfetched he couldn't have imagined it. Life had been harder then. He hadn't thought he could afford things like this.

Justin pulled one canvas down and put another one up. He began painting again, something new.

At some point Brian must have fallen asleep because he woke to Justin shaking him awake. "Let's get in bed," said Justin. His voice was husky with lack of sleep. Brian allowed himself to be pulled up and guided around a group of drying paintings.

They scrambled under the covers together and then Brian looked out at their tiny apartment and the paintings that he could just barely see in the light from the streetlight outside their window. Not monotonous, no idea repeated, but all of Brian and Justin. His gaze moved to the vase of flowers and then back to the paintings.

They were kind of like love songs, Brian decided. Only better, because they didn't speak in cliches. Justin had spent half the night painting love songs to him. And this, Brian thought, sliding a knee between Justin's and twisting Justin's head back for a kiss, was like a love song, too.