Justin

Justin loves driving, but driving in L.A. isn't really driving, it's sitting in traffic, and that makes Justin tense. Zach wisely chose to avoid LAX and fly out of Long Beach, adding significantly to Justin's drive time. And the tape....Zach has that in storage, and gives Justin the address of a storage place in Eagle Rock, with the combination to his lock. "That tape would be in RMatCR505," Zach says, jotting down the name on the box Justin should look for. Eagle Rock....with every storage place Justin passes in this huge sprawling city on his trip back from the airport, he wonders why Zach had to choose one way out in Eagle Rock? Justin gets to Zach's storage place, finds that one particular box amongst dozens labled RMat this & RMat that, finds that one particular tape amongst the dozens he's got in there, along with a stack of magazines & books....If Justin didn't have to rush out to Marina del Rey to meet Sam & see this house, he might have spent some time perusing Zach's little treasure box of fetish material....but there isn't time today to take his time with anything, and Justin grabs the tape labeled 'The Collared' & heads back into the traffic for a long drive to the westside.

As soon as Justin pulls into the driveway of the house in Marina del Rey, he knows he's come home. Seeing the kitchen...was almost like the first time he saw Eleanor, that feeling of belonging, like this is where he was always supposed to be. Sam smiles, "I knew you'd love this place," he says. Justin glances warily at his former client: just like when he first saw Eleanor, he isn't able to hide his love from people. He takes Eleanor's digital camera out of his pocket & starts snapping pictures, getting the best possible angle of the gleaming metal counters. "I don't have the final say," he reminds Sam: Justin's 'sugardaddy' could still veto this. Though he doubts she will, he knows her tastes, she likes a cold metal surface as much as he does. "Wait until you see the bath," Sam says, taking him into the parlor. Justin keeps taking pictures, making sure everything that gets into the shot speaks well of the place.

Sam tells him how his friends, the architect & the desginer, had this whole house custom built, the walls, floors and fixtures all made to their specifications. "The lease would come on severe restrictions on what you can do...no painting, no resurfacing, no nails in the walls," Sam explains. That's all fine with Justin, he's only seen the first floor & he could move in today, not changing anything. He follows the real estate agent up the winding metal staircase to the second story. "Oh, where should we start?" Sam asks himself as they stand in the hallway, "How about this fabulous bathroom?" The bathroom is as big as some of the bedrooms in the house in Echo Park. "Two bathtubs?" Justin asks. "Spa tubs, actually," Sam explains, "This is one of the rooms that absolutely cannot be altered in any detail." Justin gets pictures of the spa tubs, and of the spacious shower, as big as a small bathroom itself, certainly large enough for the two of them.

The house has two bedrooms, Sam shows Justin first the smaller one, perfect for an office or a spare bedroom Sam says as Justin snaps a picture. The master bedroom is larger & more distinctive. "Wait until you see this," Sam says as he opens the closet door. And steps inside. Justin peers warily in after him, not interested enough in closets to have to inspect them from the inside. But this isn't any ordinary closet, Justin realizes as he follows Sam inside a small, dark room, nearly as big as the extra large bathroom. If the kitchen hadn't already sold him, this 'closet' would, with it's red stained glass windows, a perfect, hidden little room, a shrine to their fetish, it's like something he heard about in story once, something he'd always wanted to see made real. "This is the biggest sticking point I've had trying to rent this place: a lot of people naturally want to convert it into an office. Everyone wants to take out the red glass & put in normal windows. That room was designed to preserve clothing, so sunlight doesn't touch it. It's meant to be a huge walk in closet, and that's what it has to stay," Sam says with a weary sigh. Justin can tell, Sam has had enough of trying to lease this place, the conditions on it are too high for the kind of people who can afford to rent large homes in Marina del Rey: they want things done their own specifications, not someone else's. So Justin chooses that moment to tell Sam how much he's looking to pay: in this dark & red lit closet/room, Justin is easily able to assume the dominant role that used to define their dom/client relationship, and Sam unconsciously slips into wanting to please Justin. They can't shake on it here: Justin has to show his pictures to Eleanor, and Sam has to clear Justin's offer with his friend. But Justin can see he's won Sam over, Sam will put real effort into selling his friend, and then be done with it.

After a day of driving in traffic, Justin is in no mood for Gavin's fans, gathering on their yard, so he slips past them, passing his own house altogether to go straight to Eleanor's. She's not home of course, and won't be for hours, but Kira is out of town this week & won't be there today at all, making this the most private place Justin can be at the moment. He wants to watch this tape about the Collared, to see what about his time in New York made it to public record, what exactly Zach actually knows or thinks he knows about him. But then, there's a strange knot in his stomach as he thinks about confronting his past, seeing himself. He's seen pictures & video of his performances before, he's not sure he's ready to relive the rest of it, to watch himself through the camera eye, especially in that situation. New York was a particularly difficult city for him, there was no place in the whole city where you could be alone, even for a second. People were always in your face, they were always close to your skin, you couldn't move with out brushing into them, like herds of rats scurrying through the gutters, swarming over each other. Justin was always on edge while he lived there, he was always ready to strike, always looking for a fight. Maybe that's why he's settled in L.A., if he is 'settled'...this city is a wide empty sprawl, the streets are full of traffic, but there are no people outside the cars. Anyone who dares to walk has the city to himself, when Justin wants to be alone, he only has to go outside, walk down the street....He doesn't know when Eleanor will be home, so Justin sits at her computer, works on his pictures of the house in Marina del Rey. The past is the past: he actually has a future he's looking forward to, and he wants this house, for himself & Eleanor. He's sure she'll love the house, so makes sure the pictures are perfect, to show off it's most impressive views, the best light, putting together a presentation Sam would be impressed with. While he was going through the house pictures, he came across the pictures he shot of Eleanor, and when he finished the business with the house, he started playing with his personal photos. He's been fascinated lately with her photo editing software: she showed him the basics so he could size & crop the pictures of apartments and houses he's been looking at, but once she let him alone with it, he discovered there's was a lot more you could to photos besides cutting them up.

Eleanor surprises him when she comes home: he's lost track of time while messing around with his pictures, making several versions of the two he shot of her, trying different filters, layering them over each other. "Oh, I like that, let me print it out on the big printer at the office," she says, looking over his shoulder at the image on the screen, his hand grasping her breast. "Eleanor, you can't bring this to your office," Justin says. She raises her eyebrow, "I want to hang it in my office, Justin. I like it. It's art," she says. She told him once a guy hung a public urinal in a museum & the world called it 'art', so Justin doesn't take the compliment too personally.

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