This feedback thing is just killing me with happiness, and I'm starting to think no one will believe me when I say this but.... OMG, thank you! Coming from you that means the world. And I especially thank you for picking up on the humanization of Melanie. I drew on the things in canon that made me love her, especially some of the scenes with her and Brian that I found really charming and funny, and also her mama moments over the years with Justin. I admit that they never really did anything with those seeds, but they ARE there and I'm going to water them, dammit.

If it weren't for Gus, I wouldn't. But the story opens the night Gus is born and Brian meets Justin. Those two events are not just related, they're almost one event in the foundation of who I see Brian as being, and what happens to him. I can't unlink them, I can't keep hating Gus' mom, I can't even let Gus' other mom be a one-dimensional shrew or plot device. Because my post-513 therapy is about Gus as well as Justin, because ultimately it's about BRIAN.

However, I promise not to turn Brian totally domesticated and daddy-ish. I just... I can't leave things how they were. Hence the story.

513, the episode that launched a thousand fanfics.