S1, 101.

"We have to take the child to school."

"In that?"

"Do you care?"

"Fuck, no."

Michael sat in semi-sullen silence and Brian presented an unaffected air, which Justin was learning to recognize as their default positions. Justin wasn't entirely sure how to act. He had just stayed up all night having sex--fucking, he corrected himself--and now he was being driven to school not by the stupid school bus or his mother, but by the guy he'd been fucking, in a car spray-painted to tell the world what he was. It felt kind of good, but made his stomach twist up nervously. There was no frame of reference for how to act. He felt like he was floating in limbo, in between all the ways he would normally act. He decided he liked it.

They hit rush hour traffic just as soon as they moved and Michael lasted through five more minutes of annoyed silence before he had to start talking again--silly things about how he was going to be late for work and more about the evil kids in his neighborhood, and about someone named Emmett. Justin could see it rising out of him, the need to talk. Michael fidgeted and eyed the other drivers as they drove passed, and this, perversely, made Justin relax. He watched Brian's profile and settled into a contented not-enough-sleep stupor.

At a stop light, Brian glanced back at him and half-smiled and Justin felt his chest tighten for a split second in some sort of unnameable, uncontrollable reaction. It happened everytime Brian glanced at him and the reaction seemed to build on itself the longer Brian looked.

"Which way?" he asked. Justin took a deep breath and sat up straighter.

"Get off at exit twenty, then right on Vermont," he said. Silence held for a moment.

"You really don't care that you're going to school in a car with a giant pink "faggot" sign on it?" asked Michael.

"Why should I? It's true, sort of."

"Sort of?" said Brian. "I fucked you in every position I could think of for most of the night and all you can say is 'sort of'?"

Michael's scowl deepened and Justin felt a cheerful grin stretch across his mouth, entirely independently of his will. "What I meant was that 'faggot' is kind of a bad word, isn't it? I mean, I guess I am, but that's what the jocks at school say when they're shoving some guy into a locker. Isn't 'gay' better?"

"You like dick," said Brian. "It's the same difference."

"It is not, Brian," said Michael. "Don't fuck with the kid."

"Too late for that, Mikey." Justin could see Brian's lips twist upward at his own innuendo, but he knew that Brian had said it just to get a rise out of Michael, who fell for it and glared. "Besides, faggot is just as valid as cock-sucker, and he certainly is that."

"Well," Justin said, ignoring them and thinking partially outloud. "We've already taken back 'queer'. Maybe it's time to take back 'faggot', too, so they can't use it as a slur any more."

"How are you going to do that?" asked Michael. "Just let them call you that?"

"No," said Justin slowly, as if talking to a small child. "Call myself that. Just like those 'We're here and Queer' slogan things. It doesn't really work as an insult if the person being insulted says it first."

"Yeah, I'm so sure you're just going to walk down the halls of your high school announcing that you're a faggot," challenged Michael. He sounded like he was trying to sneer, but after experiencing the Brian-sneer, Justin was less than impressed.

"I won't have to," said Justin. "This car will do it for me."

Michael made a noise of exasperation and avoided the eyes of the driver next to them. Justin, finding his cockiness increased exponentially in the face of Michael's discomfort, grinned and waved cheekily at said driver.

"Well if we're going to make a statement," said Brian, "We should make it a big one."

"Size queen," Michael muttered. Brian ignored him and swung the car onto Vermont. He spotted the school and hit the gas and Justin braced his feet on the seats feeling like he was hanging in that split second before the slope on a rollercoaster, helpless but exhilarated. Brian was a fucking rollercoaster. And Justin was going to ride him a hundred more times.