qaffic: know

Just for the record? josselin is unclean.

I still love her, though. But unclean is unclean.

Anyway.

Know
by jenn and josselin

We were snippeting. And kind of bored. Or you know, really bored.



This is what he knows now.

Justin's beautiful like this, messy blond hair on Ethan's flat pillows, sheet rucked up between long legs, bare to the hip. Still flushed from sex, Ethan's fingerprints all over him, written in sweat and come and devotion, even if Ethan's the only one that sees them.

Even if Ethan's the only one that ever will.

It's midnight, and it's late, and tomorrow, he's at a concert with a long night alone, and Justin already misses him, told him with his mouth. Silky whispers against his throat and lips. Told him with his body. Hard, strong hands; clinging, soft mouth; little moans in his throat stifled against the sheets. He almost never lets Ethan top. Tonight, he didn't want anything else.

Sunshine, thinks Ethan, staring at the spill of blond hair, almost colorless in moonlight. Something out of designer art, like one of those photography books, glossy black and white, ultrasharp and ultraclear. Almost unreal.

I'll miss your mouth, Ethan thinks, red, swollen lips wrapped around his cock only hours before. Soft in sleep, curled up in corners. I'll miss your eyes and the way you look at me when I come home. I'll miss watching you draw and watching you cook and watching you breathe, and it doesn't seem worth it, not right now. Nothing could be.

Carefully, Ethan shifts closer, just enough to run a finger down the long line of Justin's spine. Silky-soft skin over bone, the play of muscle beneath. Justin seems soft to him like this, and Ethan thinks how Justin curled into him, under him, face against his neck, breathing that there had never been anyone like him.

The first few weeks had been hard. Ethan remembers that, remembers overbright smiles and overbright eyes and thinking he understood, how hard it was to let go, how hard it was to give up, the way Justin rolled off the bed and hit the wall when he was still half-asleep, turning the wrong direction to go to the bathroom, that second of shattered familiarity, recognition, that single second where blue eyes widened and everything seemed to hit him all anew. Coming home late to see Justin by the window, pad resting on bended knees, pencil in one hand, eyes looking for something long gone.

Ethan had looked out of a hundred hotel windows just like that, searching for a home that would never be in sight no matter how he squinted and tried to see.

It had passed. Justin never runs into walls anymore.

Everything passed, though. Overbright smiles and overbright eyes. Laughter in their bed. The grin when he walked in the door. All the things that Ethan hadn't known, that now he does.

He knows what Justin looked like when Brian fucked him now.

He's beautiful like this.

There were hints, in the way he wriggled, the moans caught in his throat but never released. He never saw it before, but now he can't see anything else.

Justin rolls over, mouth curling into a sated smile, and Ethan leans down to touch his hair, breathe in the scent of himself, coating Justin like a cloak; long, frantic sex with Justin chanting at the ceiling, half-reclined body, half-closed eyes, half-parted lips, half-drawn breaths spilling into the air. Ethan was drunk on the taste of Justin's skin, the hot, tight ass around his cock, the clutching hands and the frantic voice.

The effortless, flexible roll of Justin's body as he took it up the ass, like it was nothing, like it was easy, like he was made to do nothing else, like he'd never *done* anything else.

So *natural*, this pretty boy, who fucked him into unconsciousness every night before, spread out on Ethan's cheap sheets tonight, neck arched, eyes open wide and sweet. Ethan had come just from watching him writhe, like that. Watched blue eyes close when he came, cock rubbing on Ethan's stomach, soft and sated after.

Rolling over to curl up against him and sleep, like they did this all the time and never before tonight.

He knows more about Justin than anyone else ever could. He knows his favorite foods and his favorite bands and his favorite clothes, the way he looks when he wakes up and the way he brushes his teeth. He knows how Justin's cock feels in his mouth, his hand, up his ass, the way Justin twitches and moans and whispers dirty things into his mouth, his ear, his skin.

He *knows*, knew, everything, but he didn't know this, never met the creature beneath him that shuddered at every thrust and used short nails on his skin like he was trying to dig his way inside Ethan's skin, whispering *more* and *harder* and *please* and then nothing at all.

There are other things he didn't know, and now he does.

He never knew how Justin stretched after, slow and sated, slim fingers trailing over his ass with an indrawn breath. Ethan didn't know how he'd slide his palm through the come on his stomach and lick it, pressed tight between moist lips and a dark pink tongue. He didn't know how Justin watched with glazed eyes as Ethan awkwardly pulled the condom off, dropping it on the trash can beside the bed.

Everything passes, Ethan thinks, watching Justin sleep. Smiles when he comes home, instead drowned in sketchpads by the window. A warm, strong body above him, pushing into him, filling him and making him come hearing music all around him, replaced with this soft sprawl of gorgeous boy who comes from a cock up his ass and a secret smile.

Hard and fast and clenched teeth and broken moans, no dirty-sweet words whispered in Ethan's ear.

"Justin," he whispers, and brushes another kiss, salty-sweet, watching the smile widen and hearing the sigh.

Ethan has never heard Brian say Justin's name, but he knows how Brian used to say it by the way Justin responds to his voice now.

Less is more in the Kinney world, and Ethan supposes that Justin had told him that from the beginning, all those carefully defensive complaints about boyfriends who refused to talk. But it took Ethan a while to put it together, before he realized that Justin might profess to like whispered endearments said tenderly in his ear, that they might make him blush, but what made him come was silence, was throaty grunts and repetitions of his name choked in a whisper as though they were painful to say.

Less is more, and Ethan was beginning to learn that Justin didn't really want to hear an hour long description of what rehearsal was like, that Justin didn't care what his teacher thought about the increased vibrato on the D. Justin liked quiet, and he liked sex, and he actually seemed to like fucking techno dance music, because there wasn't any other reason Ethan could come up with that Justin would have it turned up loudly one afternoon as he painted, and blush and quickly fumble it off when Ethan burst through the door with his violin case.

Thick, heavy, rough rhythms that wrote their way into your blood, still vibrating in Justin's skin when he touched him, choreographing his every move for hours. Ethan could hear the song every time he watched Justin breathe. He could hear it with every thrust in Justin's body, the beat of the thrusts and the slap of wet skin and the pattern of Justin's pants.

He never knew, and Justin told him, with his lips when he said Brian's name, with his body when Ethan fucked him, sweaty and shuddering and coming hard enough to see stars.

Ethan sort of knew this would be the last time, somehow.

But he didn't know it would take 27 days for Justin to go back to Brian. He didn't know that it would be after dinner in Brian's office, and not in the middle of the night at Babylon or Saturday morning at Brian's loft. He didn't know that their first time, Brian would come too soon and Justin would know that this wasn't about sex, about performance, about fucking art or music or shit, but that this was about lust and need and love. He didn't know that it would be forever, that ten years later they'd fight about colors for ad copy and new tile for the bathroom floor and Brian being in denial about botox treatments.

Because Ethan still didn't know love, really.