"I still don't see why we don't go after the cop again. I mean, we barely tried. I'll put your leather jacket back on, be the bait... maybe he'll show up tonight."

Brian sighed, running a hand through his hair to give it the intentionally messy look he'd been sporting since he started to let it grow out. Justin let himself get distracted, remembering how perfect this length had been for grabbing onto when Brian had sucked him off earlier that morning. "It was a longshot to begin with," Brian said. "And probably too dangerous for you anyway. I shouldn't have suggested it."

"Yes you should have. What other option did we have?"

"We're not actual superheroes. This doesn't have to be our responsibility. See you tonight?" Brian grabbed his jacket from where it was resting on the back of the stool in the kitchen. Then he leaned over the counter for a kiss. Justin reciprocated instinctively, and watched with a slight frown on his face as Brian headed out the door without waiting for an answer.

Self-preservation had forced Justin to get very good at reading Brian Kinney's body language and tone. He knew Brian was worried about Stockwell, about the cop, about the kid who had died. He also knew that Brian was never going to admit it. Justin glanced over to where the leather jacket he'd used the night before was still sitting over the edge of the couch. One more try couldn't hurt.

In the end, it was easier than Justin thought to pick up the cop. Easier, because the guy came right up to him and seemed very interested, but then impossibly harder, because this guy wasn't messing around. He didn't smoke, refused to buy a drink, and Justin honestly couldn't think of another way of getting what he needed. The thought of letting this fat, disgusting pervert touch him made Justin nauseous, but if he really was the murderer who had killed Jason Kemp, then he had to do what he could.

They went back to the cop's place, and Justin felt horribly stupid when he realized just how alone he was in all of this. Nobody knew where he was – if he'd told Brian, or Daphne, or anybody at all, they would have tried to stop him. But now that he was here, now that he was doing this, he felt scared and stupid.

The worst moment of terror was when the man placed his beefy hands around Justin's neck. It was all Justin could do not to grimace in disgust with the man inside of him, grunting and sweating as he thrust forward, but the second he felt his throat tighten under those large hands, he felt the first stirrings of true panic.

Luckily, it didn't last long. Spots were appearing in front of Justin's eyes when the man on top of him grunted and pulsed deep into Justin's ass. He fell heavily on top of Justin for a moment, then rolled over and tossed the condom carelessly into a trashcan.

Justin had the horrifying feeling that he'd just learned how Jason Kemp had died. If this fucking pig cop had been a bit less careful, or if he had lasted a bit longer, he might have killed another victim tonight. Justin shuddered, standing up and pulling up his underwear with care. His lungs hurt, his ass was so sore he wasn't sure how he was going to make it back home...

Home. Justin felt a dull ache in his heart when he thought about Brian, and realized quite suddenly that he couldn't go back to the loft tonight. He was too shaken up. He wouldn't be able to hide that from Brian, and he had to have a chance to think, to process all of this before he explained it.

Fully dressed, Justin started to head for the door. He could hear the sounds of the cop taking a piss in the bathroom, and quickly reached down and grabbed the used condom from the trash bin, tying it off and pocketing it with a grimace of disgust. Feeling daring, Justin darted out of the bedroom and into the living room, looking for something, anything, that would give him the cop's name.

He glanced down at a TV-guide on the table in the living room, and read the name Kenneth Reichert on the subscription label. Just as he was leaning down to pick it up, he heard a voice from behind him.

"What the hell do you think you're doing?" Kenneth Reichert growled, grabbing Justin's arm and spinning him around.

"Oh – I'm, I was just... leaving," Justin stammered, trying to pull his arm away.

"You fucking slut. You goddamned fucking whore! Get the hell away from my stuff! Reichert's fist swung forward before Justin knew what was happening. Pain exploded along the right side of his face, and he stumbled backwards. His head hit the side of the coffee table on his way down, and he cried out, biting his lip and tasting blood.

"Fuck," Reichert growled above him. "Fucking not worth this goddamn bullshit." Justin was tugged unceremoniously to his feet and shoved toward the door. He hit the concrete porch and felt breath expel from his body in one large gust. Everything fucking hurt. Reichert threw a bundle of money, their agreed upon sum, at Justin's feet, and slammed the door.

Barely conscious of how he had gotten off the ground or made his way out of the driveway, Justin made his painful, faltering journey to safety.

"Oh my God. Oh my God!"

"Daph... keep your voice down, it's late."

"Justin, are you okay? We need to get you to a hospital – "

"No! No, I'm fine. I just... I need ice."

"Oh my God!" Daphne repeated, pointing at the bruising on his neck. "What happened?"

He really didn't want to talk about it, but he did anyway. This was Daphne, and he was asking a lot of her. As she fetched ice for his face and asked awkward questions about the state of... other areas, he filled her in, trying to stop his lips from trembling and his voice from shaking as he did so.

"Justin. Oh, Justin," Daphne said, crying a little bit. She hugged him gently, and for some reason it didn't annoy him the way it had back after he got bashed. He was in need of a little comforting right now, and somehow he wasn't sure he was going to get a lot of that when he told Brian what had happened.

"I don't think he tore anything, but I have to go check," Justin said. He could feel the way his voice had gone blank underneath the hoarseness that came from nearly being choked to death. In the bathroom, he probed gently at his asshole and was relieved to find that while it hurt like hell, there was no blood, no tearing.

Back in the living room, he sat down gingerly on the couch and met Daphne's tear-filled eyes. "Daph. I know this is... a lot, but I promise you I'll be okay. And... and it worked, I got what I needed out of this."

"It wasn't worth it, Justin. You could have died!"

Justin bit his lip, forgetting for a minute that he'd cut it open when Reichert had hit him. Luckily, the painkillers Daphne had given him earlier were working. "I know. And I'm sorry for scaring you, but I'm not sorry I did it. I had to, Daph. Don't you get that?"

Daphne softened slightly, and took Justin's hand in hers. "What are you going to tell Brian?"

Justin sighed. He'd already decided to crash at Daphne's place, which was technically still his place too, for the night. He'd texted Brian to tell him. He'd see Brian the next evening, and he'd explain everything then. What Justin had gone through with Reichert had been bad enough. This next part was going to be similarly terrible.

"Hey, I brought food from that Greek place you like," Brian announced as he walked in the door. Justin had situated himself at the table, so that Brian wouldn't see him when he first walked in. He heard Brian setting the bags down on the counter, shrugging out of his jacket, and finally walking towards the table. "What are you doing over – holy fuck."

"Before you freak out, I'm fine. Really, I'm completely fine. You should sit down and I'll explain everything." Justin hated the fact that his voice came out all hoarse. He wondered when his throat would stop hurting.

Brian's face had gone pale. Justin watched anxiously as his boyfriend's eyes darted from the dark purple bruise on his face to the cut on his lip to the thumb-shaped bruises on his neck. His eyes were wide, his lips pressed tight together. After a few moments of silence, Brian gave a jerky nod and sat in the chair next to Justin. He scraped the chair across the floor to get a bit closer, and then, looking a little lost, raised a hand and touched the side of Justin's face, his fingertips lightly grazing his cheeky. "What. The fuck. Happened."

"I..." Justin bit his lip. He suddenly felt exhausted, and scared, and he just really wanted Brian to touch him again, run a hand through his hair, hold him and tell him it was going to be okay. So maybe it was a pathetic thought, but Justin couldn't bring himself to mind. Brian must have seen the pain in Justin's expression, because his own face tightened a bit in sympathy.

"Justin," he said, his voice soft. "Are you sure you're okay? I mean, do you need a doctor – "

"No. No, physically I'm okay, I swear. A bit banged up, but that's it. Emotionally I guess I'm a little shaken but that can't be helped, and I'll get over it." Justin didn't really want to be looking straight at Brian when he told him what had happened, but he couldn't look away from the concern in Brian's eyes.

"Who did this?" Brian asked. His voice was still quiet, but there was a hint of anger in it now. "Tell me." He hesitated, biting his lip, and then added – "please." He reached forward and rested a hand on Justin's knee.

Justin sighed, and then reached across the table to grab the ziplock bag he had set aside. He slid it over to Brian, who stared, bewildered, at the used condom inside. "Kenneth Reichert."

"Who?"

"The cop."

Brian froze, and the hand on Justin's leg tightened. "The – cop."

"I went back to the bar last night. I tried to get him a drink, I offered him a smoke, but he didn't go for it. So I figured the only way to get what we needed was..." Justin trailed off and gestured to the condom, feeling nervous and shaky. Brian's eyes had gone even wider, and his skin was blanched white.

"You're fucking kidding me," Brian hissed. He was looking between the condom and Justin, zeroing in on the bruises on his neck. Justin was frozen, unsure how to respond to the look on Brian's face – it was some mix of the lost, wretched look he had had when he'd seen Justin at Woody's for the first time after the bashing, and an intense anger that Justin had never seen before.

"I let him take me back to his place..." Justin continued, knowing he had to get the rest out. "At first he wanted to fuck me without a condom – " Justin choked off at the look of abject terror that suddenly crossed Brian's face, and then rushed forward – "but he didn't, Brian, he didn't. I swear." Somehow Justin's hand had ended up on Brian's arm. Their bodies were angled toward each other on their chairs, Justin trying to convey comfort, Brian looking so tense he could have snapped in two.

"I told him he could get lost if he tried fucking me bareback, and eventually he agreed. He – uh... I guess he's in to breath-play, or whatever, because while he was fucking me he was... you know..." Justin raised the hand from Brian's leg and waved helplessly at the bruising on his neck. Before he could think of what to say next, Brian had stood up, and the chair he'd been sitting on was half way across the room, skittering loudly on the hardwood floor.

"Fuck!" Even from several feet away, Justin could hear the way Brian's breathing was coming in heaving gasps.

"And then afterwards, when he saw me noticing his name on a magazine, he freaked out, told me to keep my mouth shut, and punched me in the face." At this point, Justin knew he had to power through – had to finish it before he lost the nerve.

A small strangled sound tore its way from Brian's mouth. "Fucking piece of shit. I'll fucking kill him, throw his body in a dumpster, see how he likes it."

"I fell over when he punched me, hit my head on the side of his coffee table – "

Brian froze from where he had been pacing and muttering, and spun around to look at him. "You hit your head?" he didn't sound angry anymore, just lost and scared.

"But I'm fine," Justin finished, then bit his lip, annoyed at how whiney he had sounded. Of course, this just aggravated the pain in his lip, and he let out a little gasp. Brian didn't seem to notice.

"You hit your head? Did you go to a doctor? Do you have a concussion?" Not giving Justin a chance to answer, he walked forward, grabbing at Justin's arm and trying to tug him from the chair. "We're going to the hospital."

"Brian, stop. I went to Daphne's. I don't have a concussion, I feel fine. After I hit my head, Reichert threw me out of there, but I had already managed to snag the condom out of the trash." He paused for a minute, while Brian looked at him, still holding onto his arm as if to tug him up out of the chair. The look of concern on his face was frozen solid. His eyes were flinty and intense. "So..." Justin said. "It all worked out in the end." The words almost came out like a question, and Brian's face suddenly changed. He threw Justin's arm down and resumed his pacing, letting the anger take over.

"What the fuck is wrong with you?! You know, I've already held you in my arms and fucking sobbed over your dying body once. I'm not exactly looking to do it again!"

Justin could count on one hand the number of times he'd heard Brian raise his voice like this. And he could count on even fewer fingers the times Brian had voluntarily brought up the bashing, or admitted how hard it had been for him. Justin had seen Brian angry, and he'd seen Brian scared, but this was... this was a lack of control he couldn't have imagined.

"Brian, I'm fine. Okay, it was a stupid thing to do, but I felt like I was out of options!"

"You're not fucking fine, Justin. What you are is fucking stupid! How could you possibly think this was a good idea?"

"It worked, didn't it?" Justin tried to stop himself from getting defensive, but Brian was making it hard. He was floored by the admission that Brian had held him and cried when he'd been bashed, but he was also a little miffed at Brian's current vitriol. So, he'd gotten a bit banged up. He'd also gotten hard evidence to condemn an evil man. "And I'm okay! We can put this Kenneth Reichert guy away, expose Stockwell, save Pittsburgh. It was worth it."

"Fuck you." Brian said, his voice pitched low. He was seething, pacing across the floor in front of Justin, his hand clenched in his hair so hard that his knuckles were white. "Nothing is worth you putting yourself in danger like that. That fucking cop killed somebody, you stupid little fuck!"

Justin stood up and took a few angry steps towards Brian, ignoring the pain that shot through his ass as he did so. "Oh so now you care about the dead kid. I seem to recall you shrugging it off when it happened. So Debbie found a dead twink in the dumpster. Big deal. You made fucking jokes about it. Wrapped your hands around my neck while you fucked me and gave me a hard time for feeling scared. You don't get to act like a fucking concerned citizen now, just because the guy you're fucking was at risk."

"The guy I'm fucking," Brian said, venom coating every word. Then he blinked, and Justin had troubled identifying the expression on his face. "The guy I'm fucking?" He repeated. This time, his voice got all high and pained, and actually cracked on the last word. "Shit."

Brian turned around so his back was facing Justin, and scrubbed a hand hard across his face. Then he whirled back around. Justin felt a stab of shock at the tears in Brian's eyes, but he held steady, keeping his face stoic as Brian took a step towards him, closing the distance until there was less than a foot between them. "When that kid turned up dead in the dumpster, do you want to know what my first thought was?"

Justin said nothing, trying not to cry at the devastating way Brian was looking at him.

"Jason Kemp was nineteen years old. Blond. Small. Gay. First fucking thing I thought of when I heard about him was that it could have been you. I fucking thanked God that it wasn't. I had trouble letting you out of my sight for weeks after that. I only brushed it off because I couldn't handle thinking about it. Not again, not after... fucking hell." He broke off, letting out a harsh breath and gritting his teeth audibly. Justin's mouth had fallen open sometime during the speech; the cut on his lip was throbbing. Brian took a small step back, away from Justin, and broke eye contact. "Plus, I didn't want you to get all freaky about it, so I decided not to make it a big deal. I mean, queer bashing and dead twinks aren't exactly subjects designed to bring a smile to your face."

Justin reached forward, and was relieved when Brian let him cup a hand behind the taller man's head and pull him closer. Brian tilted his head until their foreheads touched. "I'm sorry." They stood that way for a long time, and then Brian put his arms around him, gentler than he'd ever been.

"You're not just the guy I'm fucking," Brian said, his voice all shaky and small. Justin squeezed his eyes shut, then winced as the action set a fresh throb of pain through his eye.

"I shouldn't have said that," Justin mumbled. "I know."

"Don't lie to me – are you in pain right now?"

Justin shrugged, knowing Brian would feel it under his hands. "I took some painkillers earlier, but I think they're wearing off."

Brian nodded, their foreheads still pressed together. "I'll get you something. Are you hungry?"

Justin shook his head against Brian's forehead. Gently, slowly, Brian lifted his head from Justin's and then leaned forward, pressing the smallest of kisses to the uninjured side of Justin's mouth. "I'm still really fucking pissed at you," Brian said softly. He raised a hand and brushed it through Justin's hair. Then, he separated himself and walked toward the kitchen.

Justin heard the sound of him putting the food away in the refrigerator, then the sound of a pill bottle opening.

That night, Brian held Justin in bed. It wasn't unheard of for them to fall asleep after sex, all tangled up together, and sometimes, even when they fell asleep separately, they would move in their sleep and wake up cuddling. Justin was always irrepressibly happy when he woke up to find that Brian had moved over in the night to his side of the bed. But this was different. They hadn't had sex, and now Brian was holding him like he was the most precious, fragile thing in the world. It reminded him a little of the nights they'd spent after the bashing, when Justin had just moved in. Tonight, Brian had helped Justin undress, and then led him over to the bed, wrapping them both up securely in the blankets, and now he was running his hand up and down Justin's arm, placing occasional kisses to the back of Justin's neck. The whole thing was making Justin want to cry, and he did, a little, letting the tears leak out and roll silently down his cheeks.

"Justin," Brian whispered, pressing himself closer and kissing the shell of his ear.

"Hmm."

"I – " He heard Brian swallow, and then felt his head press forward into the back of his shoulder. "I'm..." Brian took a deep breath. "It would kill me. If anything happened to you, if you... if he had..." the hand that had been rubbing up and down Justin's arm stopped its journey and grabbed Justin's wrist, hard. "It would fucking kill me."

"Brian..."

"I just wanted you to know that."

Justin let himself cry a little more, and then he just decided to say it. "I love you too."

Brian didn't answer, but he pulled Justin even closer and pressed his face firmly into the back of his neck. It was a long time before either of them fell asleep.

When Justin woke the next morning, Brian wasn't in bed anymore. He stumbled out of the bedroom, ignoring the ache in his ass and the throbbing pulse over his eye, and the way his throat still felt like somebody was holding it in a vice whenever he tried to take a deep breath. Brian was in the kitchen, fiddling with the coffeemaker. He glanced up as Justin approached, and his eyes darkened when he saw the discoloration on Justin's face.

"How are you feeling?" he asked.

"Like hell."

Brian nodded, seeming to appreciate the honesty. "I'm bringing Reichert's DNA to the station today."

"Good."

Justin watched Brian, looking for signs. He seemed tense, but Justin couldn't tell if it was because he was still angry, or because he was worried, or embarrassed at having made himself so vulnerable the night before.

Brian stopped messing with the coffee maker and put his hands on the counter, staring directly into Justin's face. "Swear to me, right now, that you'll never pull anything like this again."

Justin looked at him, then shrugged. "I don't make promises I can't keep."

"Excuse me?"

"If I had it to do over again, I still would have gone through with it, Brian. It was awful, and I hated every second of it, but if it puts Reichert behind bars where he belongs – "

"That sick fuck belongs in the ground," Brian interrupted. "If you can't promise me not to do it again, then you have to promise me you'll tell me."

"I did tell you."

Brian glared at him. "Tell me beforehand, you fucking smartass."

Justin thought about this for a minute. He supposed the likelihood of this scenario repeating itself was fairly slim, and he knew better than to cross an obstinate Brian Kinney, anyway. "Fine. I promise to tell you."

Brian didn't look as satisfied as Justin might have expected, but he folded his lips inward and walked toward Justin, kissing him on the forehead. He let his lips linger, and Justin smiled. A small smile, to avoid pulling at the cut on his lip, but a smile all the same.

"Tell me how it goes at the station, okay?"

"You don't want to come with me?"

"I don't want anybody to see me like this," Justin said quietly. "I just... I can't handle Debbie, my mom, Emmett... you know?"

Brian wrapped his arms around Justin and nodded, his chin resting on Justin's head. "Okay. You just stay home. I'll come back after I talk to the police."

Justin watched as Brian walked away, feeling an odd sense of longing as he watched his retreating back. He felt like he was still in a nightmare, somehow, where everything was slightly off-kilter. He'd let a murderer cop fuck him, and then the next night he'd lain in the dark while Brian Kinney had whispered a confession of love – practically – into his ear. Nothing felt like reality. But even through the physical pain and the mental exhaustion and the emotional chaos, Justin could find an anchor in Brian. In his words as he'd walked out the door. Home. That's what this place was for Justin. That's what Brian was to him, no matter how cheesy it might be to say. He could handle the rest of it, as long as he had that.

I tend to think that if this scenario played out on the show, it would accelerate a lot of other things about Brian and Justin's relationship. How do you think the rest of the show would play out from here? Got any particular moments in this story you thought were well written? I'm in need of your feedback!