Pull his body closer, feel his breathing, and don’t think of last times or first times or anything, just right now. Just feel this moment and take it and put it away and save it because somehow you know that it’s going away – that everything is going away.

He’s going away.

You wanted him to go, you pushed him away a thousand and one times and it’s some kind of bitter irony that he’s leaving when you stopped pushing. At least you think you stopped pushing. But maybe you’ve been pushing so long that you don’t even realize you’re doing it anymore.

In any case, he’s better off without you. You know that.

You curl up against him, your chest pressing against the smooth skin of his back, and you let your fingers skim across his arm, gently, caressing him in a way that you know you haven’t done enough.

His body is rigid against yours, tense and taut and cold.

He probably doesn’t want you to touch him, probably doesn’t want this, want anything from you. Not anymore.

He did once. At one time he wanted everything, took anything you’d give him, and you’d reveled in it. You’d laughed at how much he loved you, you’d scoffed at his tears, his words of devotion.

And now you feel like you’re the one left wanting.

You can admit it now, now that he’s leaving. You can admit that you’d gotten used to having him here, to depending on him, to looking forward to seeing him, to wanting to crawl into bed beside him, curling up around him like this.

You can admit that you even missed him when he wasn’t around, and you know that you’ve been missing him a lot lately.

And you hate missing him.

It was obvious he was getting fucked somewhere else, you could tell by the way he’d bite his lip when you’d slide inside him, the tenderness he’d tried to hide. You knew there were kisses that couldn’t wash away, rosy marks on his chest and neck where another’s lips had caressed him, where another’s mouth had traveled across his skin.

Where someone else had tried to mark him as his own.

You knew all that and so instead of trying harder, instead of trying to fix all the things you knew were broken, instead of doing the things you knew you should… what you did instead was fuck with his head, screw him around, and let him know you were in on his little game. Let him know that you *knew*. That he wasn’t fooling anyone, most of all you.

Maybe you thought that it would take the fun out of it, and he’d stop. Maybe that was your way of confronting him, without really doing it.

Maybe you’re completely fucked now and don’t know it.

And maybe you do.

He sighs deeply and you feel his chest rise and fall, expand as he sucks in air and slowly lets it out. His breath is quiet and steady and you know he doesn’t want you to hear him sigh, doesn’t want you to hear anything. He doesn’t want to let you in anymore.

Worse, he doesn’t need you anymore, and you think maybe that scares you more than anything else.

You keep trying to believe that this is for the best, that this is what has to be done, *should* be done because you both know that he was never meant to love you. This was never meant to happen. You weren’t supposed to feel this way and it isn’t supposed to feel so good. You aren’t supposed to like this so much, you aren’t supposed to want this, and goddamn, you somehow know you’re going to miss it so much it’ll hurt.

You know you’ll hurt. You know it’s coming and you know it’s going to be hard and you know that everyone will look at you and Christ, you don’t want that, any of that, and you know now that you will never, ever, do this again.

You’ll never let yourself want anyone this much again.

When you held his flushed face between your palms and whispered you decide, you meant it. You wanted him to make his own decision because you couldn’t do it for him. You couldn’t do it for yourself, even.

And besides, you knew that if he had to ask you silly things like if you’d cared if he wasn’t there… if he had to do things like confess, like tell you that someone else loved him… you knew that he’d decided to leave you anyway.

You knew that it was over, and even though maybe all you would’ve had to say was I love you or please don’t go or even just stay, you knew you couldn’t – wouldn’t – even say that, and so it was lost in that moment.

You lost in that moment.

You couldn’t say what he wanted to hear and he couldn’t hear all the things you wanted to say.

Doesn’t matter anyway. You’re Brian Kinney, and you don’t do love or boyfriends or commitment. You just don’t fucking do that.

But Christ, somehow you ended up doing this, whatever this is, whatever feeling this is that you have, holding him in your arms with something that tastes and feels like, but isn’t regret. No, because you don’t do that either.

You don’t do lots of things, but God, you really did do this and as much as you can pretend and lie and fool yourself, this is the closest fucking thing to real love that you’ve ever had.

You know it, and still you’re letting it go. If you were a sentimental asshole, or maybe just a little bit more honest, you’d realize that was the proof of what this really is.

But it’s too late now and tomorrow is coming too quickly and right now you have him—a warm, familiar body molded up into yours, the brush of his skin beneath your fingertips, the scent of his hair filling your nose. You have him in your arms, and in your bed. You have him for just a few hours more, a day at most, and you’ll take it.

You’ll take all of it, because tomorrow he’s gone

You close your eyes and tell yourself this was meant to be, and you let your lies overtake you; let yourself be buried in dishonesty and falsities. You have to do this because there’s no other way.

And in the end all you really know is that you’re a bigger liar than you ever really realized.

In the end you figure out that regret isn’t so bad, that change is good and that pulling him closer doesn’t always mean pushing him away.

In the end you wish you had even just half the strength that he does and know that as much as you think he doesn’t need you anymore, you’ll find that you need him twice as much.

But in the very end you realize there is no end… only new ways to start again.