This was inspired by that scene in "...And Then There Were Fewer" where Stewie explains how he would have killed James Woods and Brian calls him an artist. Title is from "Wishbone" by Richard Siken.
It'd be funnier in the abstract, Brian thinks.
He wishes that he had the strength of character to find it easier in the abstract, too, but it's not, not in any meaningful way. Stewie takes care of everything. Really, he doesn't need Brian at all - and this isn't the first time that Brian has had that thought, but he banishes it with a little shake of his head. He really doesn't need Brian at all. He acquires the victims while Brian lays in Hotel Room Number Whatever, picking at room service and watching bad TV, and waits for Stewie to text him. He takes the men (always men) apart while Brian watches. He cleans up his own messes. Brian is essentially his chauffeur, and taking Stewie wherever he wants to go is not a new dimension to their dynamic, so it's easy.
If Brian is being honest with himself, it'd be harder writing about it than it is living it.
"Stop thinking so loudly," Stewie mumbles, his cheek resting against the car window. "You're keeping me awake."
"It doesn't sound like I'm giving you any trouble sleeping," Brian tells him, and then adds, "Were you dreaming about me?" in a tone that betrays his immediate regret.
"You wish," Stewie scoffs, rubbing his eye with a fist in a way that makes him look like an infant again. "I was dreaming about Thanksgiving, actually. We were - at home," he says haltingly, as if he'd been searching for the right word and realizes that he missed the mark. "Peter killed the turkey in the backyard. Slit its neck. I would have sworn it was a memory, really, it was so vivid, but I must have been eighteen or nineteen. Then Lois served it, but it was under-cooked, and you refused to eat it, bleeding heart liberal that you are." He smiles, too bright against a dusky, barren backdrop.
Brian rolls his eyes. "Just because I'm a liberal doesn't mean I'm a vegetarian. You're not supposed to eat under-cooked poultry, anyway."
"You're not supposed to drink yourself into a stupor, either, but one of us in this vehicle indulges himself in that vice quite a bit more often than the other," Stewie reminds him none-too-kindly. "Anyway, we cracked the wishbone after dinner and ended up severing it perfectly down the middle." He pauses. "So, in a way, I guess I was dreaming about you."
Brian kisses his knuckles, afterward, and is rewarded for the implicit display of fealty with a slender hand falling from his mouth to the inside of his thigh.
"I've brought you to heel, haven't I," Stewie says, not asks, and so Brian doesn't give him an answer. Why give it him one when he already knows what it is? "I can't help but wonder, though, what you would do if you were a stronger man. Or a man at all."
"I'm man enough to fuck you," Brian says, kissing Stewie's neck this time. Stewie leans away from it; Brian can feel a tension pulling him taut.
"You're male enough to fuck me," Stewie corrects him, deceptively gentle, "and beast enough to abide by me when a man at all would bend and break."
"Is this your way of telling me that I'm good in bed or not?" Brian asks. "I'm getting some mixed signals here."
Stewie laughs, and the tension loosens. "I'm telling you," he says, cupping his chin and pulling him in for a kiss, "that you're perfect for me, you stupid mutt."
"You need to communicate more clearly," Brian says against his mouth when they barely break apart to breathe. "I'm a writer, not a mind reader."
"You're a writer?" Stewie asks dryly, and any retort residing on the tip of Brian's tongue dies when Stewie pulls him in for another kiss.
"I'll do anything!"
The only word that comes close to describing what this man in front of them is doing is "blubbering." The victim who keeps his composure is so rare as to be mythological - certainly Brian hasn't met one yet - but this man is more than hysterical. He's got thick, yellow-tinged ropes of mucus practically pouring from his nose. His eyes are bloodshot and swollen. Stewie's barely even touched him.
"I swear to God, whatever you want, I'll do it! I'll - I'll give you money! I'll suck your dick! Anything!"
Stewie looks mostly bored and a little disgusted. "Right, because I'm so desperate for money that I need the ten dollars in your wallet and so desperate for sex that I just have to have you slobbering snot all over my prick." He sighs, full-bodied, in that dramatic way of his that would look almost comical if he didn't carry himself with this sort of otherworldly grace that apparently draws every gay and bisexual man in a hundred-mile radius like flies to honey. "Brian, get the gun."
"On it," Brian says, padding unhurriedly back to the car to give Stewie the consolation of at least watching the man squirm for a few moments longer. He makes sure that the gun is loaded before handing it over.
"Thank you, dear," Stewie says sweetly before pulling the trigger. The man slumps to the ground, blood immediately beginning to pool under him.
"I'm not looking forward to cleaning this one up," he says, pouting.
"Good dog," Stewie breathes hotly in his ear.
A good dog, a bad man - they're not really so different after all.