Too schmoopy? Very possibly. Be brutal. Because there is GOOD emotion and there is sap that is no more emotional than a love song from top 40 radio.


On winter barely-mornings, when Justin had to get up for a diner shift that started before the sky was light, Brian would roll out of bed after him and follow him into the shower, both of them half-asleep.

They'd stand there, forehead against forehead, hands resting on whatever body part they'd landed on, sharing the spray of the hot water. Sometimes, hard as their friends would have found it to believe, they did not fuck. There was just the hot lull of the water, and heated skin to skin, touching without demand or intent.

In that state, conscious but not awake, floating on nothing but waves of warmth, it was easy to feel and do things that could not be done at other times. Brian could touch Justin, fingers trailing softly over wet skin, not even a pretense of washing him. And Justin could understand the language of Brian's fingers, know that each one of them was speaking to him, was learning him, a complex philosophical text in braille.

In that state, it was understood by both that, whatever Brian's problems, whatever Justin's problems with Brian's problems, they had created something warm. If Brian didn't want to label it love, well perhaps that made it more real. Without a name, it couldn't be appropriated by love songs that had been worn ragged and meaningless by hundreds of regurgitations. It couldn't be taken by other people to neaten the relationship up, swallowed whole and spit out again as something that was used and cheap, that could be talked about with knowing distain by outsiders. To them, at least, it was different than anything that had gone before and to make it the same was unthinkable. Love, the real kind, was whatever they made it, whatever formed as they fucked and fought and helped each other and told each other the truth even when it hurt. It was making sure the other got what he needed.