Brian came home drunk and angry, and picked a fight with Justin. Lately, this wasn't an unusual occurrence, so Brian was running out of things to fight about. The old Justin fallbacks he'd always had – his shit lying around, no food in the fridge, smoking the last of the weed – no longer applied, so nowadays Brian had to get creative.
"It's fucking freezing in here," he said as he slammed the door shut. Justin was sitting in the middle of the living room floor, and raised his eyebrows at Brian's glare.
"And this is my fault?" Brian felt the 'duh' was implied, so he didn't say anything else. "Brian, your loft is possibly the coldest place in Pittsburgh anyway. You had to buy me an extra blanket, remember? The temperature in here is hardly my doing."
"My lips were blue when I woke up this morning. Blue."
Justin scoffed, a sight Brian found particularly offensive. "They were not."
"The fuck would you know? At least I kept it comfortable in here, not sub-arctic."
"Brian, I can't do anything about the temperature."
Brian raised his eyebrows in the way that implied exactly what Justin could do.
"Like you actually want me gone!" Justin snapped and walked through the wall into the hallway.
Justin ended every argument that way.
Brian hated it when he did that.
---------
Justin showed up three days after his funeral. At first, Brian thought he was a hallucination, which wouldn't have been surprising considering he had kept himself as high as possible for the past week.
He was trashed when he walked in the door that night. He had fobbed Michael off downstairs, and when he finally made his way to the loft, Justin was standing by the kitchen counter.
Brian made a mental note to threaten Anita if she kept giving him such fucked up drugs.
Justin followed him into the bedroom and watched him get into bed.
"Sorry," Brian slurred. "So sorry," and passed out.
When he woke up the next morning, his head was pounding and Justin was looking at him. Brian blinked a few times, but Justin was still there. Brian shuffled into the kitchen and made a pot of coffee. Justin sat down with his chin in his hand and watched. Brian drank two cups of coffee and Justin was still there.
He pulled up a chair and looked Justin in the eye.
"What the fuck is going on?"
For the first time, Justin's expression betrayed something other than a vague seriousness. His eyes widened and his eyebrows shot up.
"You can see me?"
"You're here aren't you?"
"Well yeah. Sort of."
"What the fuck does that mean?"
Justin bit his lip.
"I died."
Brian repressed the urge to vomit.
"So what are you, a fucking ghost?"
Justin cocked his head to the side and reached for Brian's abandoned coffee cup. His hand passed right through it.
"Huh," Brian said, and went to the gym.
---------
Every time Brian woke up or walked in the door, he expected Justin to be gone.
He never was.
After the second week, he got used to it. At least, he stopped waiting for Justin to disappear. He didn't think one really got used to living with a ghost.
"Why are you even here?" Brian exploded one night after consuming half a bottle of Beam. "Why don't you just go haunt someone else?"
"I'm not haunting you. Do you see any rattling chains?" Justin snapped.
There was silence for a long time and Brian had almost forgotten they were having an argument when Justin spoke up again.
"I just … I don't know where else to go."
Justin looked so lost that Brian reached out to stroke his cheek. But his hand went straight through Justin's face. He snatched it back and cradled it to his chest.
It was cold.
---------
There were a lot of things that Brian didn't understand about Justin's presence. Justin couldn't pick anything up, or touch anything. He couldn't open doors or turn the pages of the newspaper. He went straight through walls, and after a while a while he stopped bothering to use doorways, which irritated Brian to no end.
Despite that, Justin seemed perfectly content to sit on chairs or the couch. And it wasn't like he was falling through the floor or anything.
He asked Justin about it one day, but Justin just gave him a look and said,
"How should I know?"
"Well, of the two of us, you're the one who's a ghost."
"This isn't Beetlejuice, Brian. I didn't get an instruction manual. There's no customer service."
And that was that.
Brian tried looking it up, but quickly realized that all the stuff he'd thought was bullshit before was still bullshit. Obviously none of these people had ever had their dead teenage lover show up in their loft and refuse to leave.
Ben might know something; he seemed the type. But Brian wasn't about to ask him. Besides, when Ben had squeezed his shoulder at the wake and told him that the ones we love never truly leave us, he was pretty sure he hadn't meant it literally.
---------
Justin got bored easily when he was alive, and now that he was dead it was worse. His two main distractions, drawing and fucking, were unavailable to him now, and he got antsy.
The first time Brian caught him reading the newspaper over his shoulder he snarled, closed the paper, and left for work early. The second time, Brian just barked out, "Justin!" and watched him retreat across the room. By the fifth time, Brian just sighed and tilted his head so Justin could see better. But when Justin made a sound of protest when he turned the page before Justin was finished reading Brian gave him a withering look. Justin shut up and kept reading.
A few days later Brian came home with an armful of art books and left them open around the loft. He didn't say anything and Justin didn't mention it. Every so often Brian would turn the pages when Justin wasn't looking.
When Brian came home he would find Justin studying the images spread over the coffee table until he turned on the TV, and then Justin would move to an armchair, saving the art for when Brian was gone and he was alone in the loft.
After a while, Justin got more aggressive about Brian entertaining him.
"Turn back to the section on Pollock," he'd say, and Brian would do it because turning a few pages of a book was easier than hearing Justin whine all evening.
He became fanatical about current events and started asking Brian to bring home any newspapers and news magazines he didn't already get. He watched the news in the evenings with intense concentration, and then he talked about it. A lot.
"Why do you even care?" Brian asked after the fifth time in one evening Justin tried to engage him in a debate about Israeli-Palestinian relations. "It's not like it affects you!"
Justin shut up and walked out of the loft.
---------
After the second month, Brian stopped counting the days since Justin had died. After that, it became harder to keep track of the days at all.
"Get them to change the font on that," Justin said one night. Brian nearly jumped out of his chair. Fucking ghosts didn't make a sound when they snuck up behind you. Justin wasn't paying attention, he was still looking at the layouts for Atsui Japanese Restaurants.
"Something simpler," Justin continued. "The words are lost in the complicated background."
Brian made a note to tell Marv tomorrow, and told Justin to fuck off. Justin didn't move and Brian grit his teeth.
"Why are you still here?" Justin asked.
"What?"
"It's 10:30. Aren't you going out?"
"I have work to do," Brian growled. Justin shrugged and finally drifted back over to the TV.
Ten minutes later the phone rang. Brian ignored it.
"Aren't you going to get that?"
"I'm busy."
The answering machine picked up after a few more rings.
"Hey Bri, it's Lindsay. I know you're probably out but call me tomorrow, okay? I haven't seen you in a while and Debbie said she hasn't either. I'd like to spend some time with you when we both get a free moment. Make sure you're okay … um, Gus misses you! I guess I'll talk to you later."
Brian could feel Justin's eyes on him, but he ignored them along with everything else. When he looked up again, Justin had turned back towards the TV.
Brian got up and deleted the message.
---------
"You miss me," Justin announced. Brian snorted and concentrated on cutting up an avocado. "You do. You miss me."
"You'd have to be gone for me to miss you," he pointed out.
"Whatever. You miss me."
Brian didn't answer, and after he finished eating he put on his hottest outfit and went out. Babylon had missed him and showed its appreciation on its knees in the back room. Three guys literally lined up to give him blowjobs.
Their technique was sloppy, they need to watch their teeth, and they made the dumbest noises, but they were solid and their mouths were warm.
Brian stayed out late.
He came back not half as drunk as he wanted to be, but still riding the high of the back room. The loft was dark, but there was a faint glow in the bedroom. Justin was sitting in the middle of the bed and giving him a look.
Once, that look would have made Brian take him roughly up against a pillar or facedown on the floor. Now, all he could do was grow helplessly hard. Justin's eyes flicked down to his crotch and back to his face. Then his eyes slid deliberately to the pillows.
With only a second's hesitation Brian shed his clothes and climbed onto the bed. Under Justin's gaze he began to stroke himself. He tried to go slowly, to stay in control, but his body was having none of it.
He looked up once to see Justin watching him with parted lips and after a few strokes, came harder than he had all night.
---------
After a while, Brian started to wonder if other people could see Justin too. It was partly plain curiosity, and partly a deep-down need to know he wasn't crazy. But he was uncomfortable with the idea of anybody actually finding out about Justin. These days, he tried to keep people away from the loft and keep any visits short. The few times Mikey or Deb showed up Brian found Justin later, hiding in the bathroom.
The thing was, Justin didn't look like a ghost. He wasn't white or even a little bit transparent. He still wore the same clothes he wore the day he died, and until he walked through something solid, he looked perfectly normal.
He never left the loft, except to go into the hall when he was angry at Brian.
"You can't or won't?" Brian asked.
"I don't know," Justin said, and shivered. "I haven't tried."
"Why not?"
Justin shook his head. "It's … it's terrifying. I don't even like to think about it."
"But do you think people out there can see you?"
"I don't know. I didn't even think you'd be able to see me."
"What about people we know? Like your mom, or Daphne, or Ben? Do you think they'd be able to see you?"
"I don't know, Brian!"
Brian dropped it after that, but it still plagued his thoughts.
Then there was the day that Michael came in without knocking.
It was a Sunday afternoon. Brian was at his computer, working, and Justin was laying on the couch listening the music pumping through the stereo. When the door started to slide open, Brian took one panicked look at it, and turned to see what Justin would do. Justin was clearly panicking himself, and then he sank down through the couch as Michael walked in.
Brian stayed seated, staring at the empty couch until Michael walked over and waved his hand in front of his face.
"Hey Mikey."
"Where have you been, asshole? I haven't seen you in over a week."
"Busy," Brian said. "Work." He looked at the couch.
"You haven't returned any of my calls. Or anyone else's, for that matter."
"It's a busy time of year." Was Justin actually in the couch? Or was he now beneath it? If Brian went and looked under would he see Justin? Would Michael?
"Hey," Mikey said, bringing Brian's attention back to him. "We're worried. You shouldn't isolate yourself. You should have your friends with you."
Brian rolled his eyes. "I'm fine," he said. "You know I have to do everything myself there. Good help is so hard to find." How would being inside of a couch even feel? What did it look like? Was it just dark?
"Yeah I know, but don't let it rule your life. You can still have a drink with us sometime. Or stop by the diner. Ma misses you." Brian snorted and refrained from commenting.
"I'm fine Mikey. I'll call you later." What if Justin couldn't get out of the couch?
"Promise me?"
"Yes, I promise. See you later."
As soon as the door closed Justin's head popped up through the sofa.
"That was close," he said.
"Get up," Brian said. "That's disturbing."
---------
Brian came home drunk and angry, but didn't bother picking a fight with Justin.
He stumbled around the loft while Justin hovered near him, worried and unable to help. When he felt the world fading around him he dropped into bed and pulled up the covers. Justin sat cross-legged a few feet away and watched him.
"Justin," Brian said, his voice barely a whisper.
"I'm here," Justin said. He reached out, but stopped an inch from Brian's cheek, knowing he'd be unable to touch.
Brian didn't answer, he just shivered in his sleep.