Negation, Chapter One
Takes place post-314. No Pink Posse, no cancer. Justin still lives with Daphne. Melanie's had the demon spawn.
WARNING: Rape. of Brian.
Author's Note: I started writing this in the Summer of 2004, but at that point the subject matter was too disturbing for me to deal with re: B/J - and another fic like this one came out by another writer. So I saved it in the computer and forgot about it. I thought it had promise - just, I couldn't deal with the idea of it (which is why I have the warning up). Then, the other day, I stumbled across it, and my brain started insisting on telling me what might be happening with this story while I should be doing other things. So, I'm going to see where it goes.
Later, he would realize that he had been in shock, but of course he was unable to realize that at the time. Part of shock’s very condition.
If Brian had been thinking at all, he might have tried to locate a phone. But even had he been able to conceive of that, deciding who to call, what to say, well. That was something else altogether. The only awareness penetrating in terms of the concept of the phone, in any case, was that his cell phone was gone, somewhere in his jacket, somewhere with his car. No car. No cell phone. No phone calls. Shock simplified everything; thinking became quite linear.
Under extreme stress, human beings revert to their instinctual natures. And Brian’s instinct was to curl up the essence of the self underneath the skin of the self he put on display that was never really him, to shut the world out. To do that as completely as he needed, absolutely positively must at this moment, he had to get home. Home. The loft. He had been thrown out of the car about three miles from Tremont, and when he came to, he started walking, comprehending only a dazed urgency to get there, to get home. He walked the entire way, numbly plodding, not feeling his feet on the pavement, certainly not feeling…
No. Nothing, but the urgent demand in his head to get to the loft. This was not exactly a demand, it was far more than that. Certainly not a scream, but maybe something like the echoes of a scream from way, way, way far off. He had the odd sensation that if this weird lack of focus, this sensation of being wrapped up in cotton, if that were stripped away, underneath might whisper some weird, oddly disconnected notion that there might be a more directed screech from somewhere, but any directed thought was held at bay by this strange distance, this sucking vacuum, a huge space that surrounded him, through which penetrated only a strange thrumming, urgency, echo of something that might be a scream if he tried to clear away the sense of cotton blanketing him. The sensation moved him home, and that was enough to know. Home, Brian. Get to the loft.
Three o’clock in the morning, the streets were deserted. Not a good time to be out, the thought flashed through his head like the banner of an ad, flashing almost palpably before him, and he giggled at the warning that blinked in front of him, that it was bad to be out in the dark, you might get hurt. Memory of a long-off boast, isn’t that part of the thrill? The unknown, the danger…
The giggling sound seemed to come from somewhere else, and he started at its nearness. Then he realized it was his own voice, and it wasn’t stopping when he realized what he was. The weird sound echoed through the empty air.
Home. Home. Home.
Justin woke upon hearing the loft door open. He had been home since midnight, having returned early from Babylon. PIFA ran classes Friday afternoon, and he filled in a shift as a favor to Debbie when the dishwasher at the diner had simply not shown up. He hadn’t been in the mood to party that Brian was, and so he had made an early night of it, despite the fact that they had made plans to celebrate an account Brian had finally landed after a fairly long pursuit and vicious competition between Kinnetik and three other ad agencies, including a fairly prestigious New York firm. The days he would have stayed just because Brian had wanted him to were long past.
“Hey,” he called as he heard Brian pass through the bedroom. He couldn’t see him; since removing the light over the bed, the loft received its light at night from the street lights outside the windows. His eyes fell on the only illumination in the room, the faintly illuminated arms of the clock pointing toward 3:05.
Brian walked by, into the bathroom, and shut the door without a word.
Shit. Justin took a deep breath. Was Brian pissed? Justin had felt pretty awful about leaving early; Michael hadn’t been able to come out, Emmett was throwing a party for some charity event, and Ted of course no longer hung out at Babylon. Brian had actually asked him to hang out. Directly. Which made him feel only more terrible about feeling too awful to stay.
“Just one more, promise, I’ll make it worth your while,” Brian had cajoled, slipping his arm around his waist and sliding his hand down his hip, behind his ass, between his leg, skimming his balls.
Tempting. But no. “I can’t, I really feel like hell. But you stay, enjoy.”
“Fine,” Brian had shrugged, turning away as Justin hesitated for a fraction of a second. But again, no. They weren’t there any more, and Justin was damned if he was going to slip into the dysfunctional belief that he needed to take care of Brian before he took care of himself. That was Michael’s position; well, it used to be. Michael had a whole family of his own now, and somehow he and Brian were maintaining a much healthier distance in their friendship, whether because Michael was drawing his lines, or Brian had become more secure in general, Justin didn’t care. It was good for both of them. Hell, Justin thought, it’s good for me.
But he wasn’t going to become Mikey II, no way. And he really had felt like shit. So he had cast one last look at Brian’s back as Brian walked away, as Brian had already begun to cast his gaze around the dance floor, seeing who else was available. Justin shook his head, but accepted the fact that Brian could, and would, take care of his own needs, whatever they were, whatever drove him. So, so would Justin. In any case, the tricking had cut back since Justin had moved in. Not that they discussed it, and not that it had disappeared entirely, for either of them. There was no requirement, had been no discussion, never any commitment to an idea of being physically with only each other. They seemed to be headed in that direction. Maybe one day they would be there. Not today, but maybe some day. Fuck, Justin went whole weeks without anyone else touching him. In fact, it had been almost a month this time. Most likely, that day would arrive for Brian with their AARP memberships. But who knew?
Justin didn’t really care. He was content. He listened to the shower running, and dozed, waiting for Brian to come out of the bathroom. Maybe he’d be in the mood to have Justin apologize without words, Justin’s favorite method, god, he hated to talk to Brian, hated to discuss shit, just fucking let it happen and go with the flow. There seemed to be no better way to work and live with Brian Kinney. Maybe he’d get a chance to make up for needing to leave early, for leaving Brian alone. And he had been alone; all those tricks, nameless, faceless… it wasn’t exactly company. In fact, sometimes Justin felt really sad for Brian when he watched him, after a bad day, run through one, two, three or more blowjobs from anonymous sources in a row in the backroom. Anonymous sex may provide solace for the single self, but it didn’t provide a connection to the world outside the self. And it was there that one found peace. Fuck, how did he know this at 20, and Brian didn’t know this at 32? Or did he, and he resisted it? If that was the case, what did it say about his conscious desire to self-destruct? And how sad was that?
But talking would never change any of it; Brian was what he was. And Justin felt himself giving up on hoping he would find a way out of that self-destructive lifestyle. Actively trying to change Brian would only make him resent the effort, stress their relationship. As if it needed more of that. And, as Daphne so helpfully reminded him any time he lost his mind and professed some starry twinkified hope of a better Brian, “People don’t change for anyone but themselves. And then only because they have to, and never willingly.”
On that thought, Justin slipped into sleep, hoping that Brian had only gotten a single blow job if anything, tonight, that he had saved most of himself for what awaited him at home. One thing that was never difficult between them was the sex. In the meantime, he dozed off…
He was not sure why he snapped awake so abruptly, and he was not sure for how long he had been drifting in that half-sleep, but he suspected it had been a while. The shower was still running. And as the cobwebs of sleep cleared from his head, he became aware that the light illuminating the outer room was not that of the street lamps outside the window; there was a strange angle to the shadows, an odd cast to the light. He sat up, grabbed his sweat pants from off of the floor, drew them on, and lifted himself out of bed. He crossed to the top of the steps at the bedroom, looked out into the loft.
The front door was wide open, the light from the hall spilling in across the floor.
Well, fuck. Brian must be in quite the mood. He never left the door open, no matter how wasted he was. Not after the robbery - with the amount of grief he had visited on Justin’s head, anal retentive behavior regarding the door was almost to be expected on Brian’s part. Justin walked slowly down the steps. He couldn’t be that wasted, he thought as he moved across the living area, to pull the door shut and lock it, securing the alarm. Wasted Brian usually just passed out on the couch. After shutting the door.
How long had he been in the shower? Justin wondered. The familiar dim light from the street filtered in through the windows as Justin moved back to the bedroom. And realized, in the dark of the loft, that the light in the bathroom was off.
It would be pitch black in there. Justin felt the first stirrings of uneasiness as he moved cautiously toward the bathroom. He stared at the door, unsure as to whether he should go in. If he was being ridiculous, worrying needlessly. But still…
The dark bathroom. The shower, running for… he glanced at the arms of the clock glowing across the bedroom. Forty-five minutes?
“Brian?”
No reply, of course, not through the door, over the water. He pushed the door open. Pitch black. “Brian?”
No answer. Okay, this was not right. He walked in, announced, “I’m turning on the light. Okay?” And he flipped the light on.
Brian was still in the shower, but he was on the floor, huddled against the wall in a fetal position, not moving, his arms around his legs, knees up in his chest, forehead on his knees. The water was beating onto his head. Cold.
Justin stepped over to the stall cautiously and opened the door. “Brian? What’s going on?” He turned the water off. Brian didn’t move. Justin reached down, and touched his shoulder, and Brian flinched, pulling away. But he didn’t lift his head, merely twisted his body sideways. Justin squatted down, somewhat at a loss. “Brian?”
And then he saw the blood.
He hadn’t noticed it while the shower was going, but with the water off, a steady stream of crimson flowed into the drain. It was not insignificant. And it was not stopping.
“Oh, fuck,” Justin whispered, and with the sudden change in his tone, Brian lifted his head. Justin saw the developing black eye, the swelling cheekbone. They stared at each other, and Justin saw that Brian had a blankness about him. Shit. Shit, shit… “You’re bleeding. Pretty bad. Can you stand up?” What the fuck?
Brian stood, almost like a puppet on strings, closing his eyes and swaying, leaning against the wall to catch the sudden fall sideways. Justin stayed down in a squatting position, and looked up Brian’s body, saw that his side was turning purple, but there were no openings on his skin, nothing like a knife having done any work… and then he saw where the blood was coming from.
He left the shower stall quickly, on autopilot, and dove at the cabinet under the sink where he stored the towels for his art work, clean but ragged. He went back into the shower stall, breathing deep breaths in, in an effort to keep his heart from racing, forcing himself to keep the cold panic tightly reined. Brian had slid back down the wall, back onto his haunches. Justin ran water over one of the towels he brought back with him.
“Stand up,” he said. When Brian complied, he wiped the blood carefully off his ankle, up to his thigh, and then held one of the dry towels up between his legs. “You need to go to the hospital.”
“No.”
Brian hadn’t opened his eyes, and began sliding back down the wall.
“Brian…”
“No.”
Justin leaned toward him. “Something’s torn inside you. You’re bleeding, badly. Is the car in the garage?”
Just a head shake.
“Is the car outside?”
“I don’t know where the fucking car is!” Brian yelled, suddenly, loudly, raising his head and glaring wildly at Justin, who jumped back. Then he seemed to collapse back into himself, and his head dropped back onto his knees. Justin noticed that the towel under him was turning red. He stood up.
“I’m calling an ambulance.”
“Don’t you fucking dare!” Brian shouted, attempting to get up, but he swayed, leaned to the side in an almost drunken pitch, and sat back down abruptly, his hand clutching his head. Justin practically ran into the bedroom and snatched the phone from its cradle, dialing 911.
“Emergency operator, do you require fire, ambulance or police?”
“Ambulance,” Justin answered.
“Sir, may I have your address and to whom am I speaking?”
Justin gave the address and his name.
“What is the nature of the emergency?”
“My boyfriend’s been assaulted,” Justin answered. Now that he was speaking to someone in a position to assist, he felt the panic begin to take him over. “He’s bleeding pretty badly, I was sleeping when he came in and he got into the shower for about forty minutes, but it isn’t stopping…”
“All right, Justin, take a breath. We have an ambulance on the way, they’ll be there in five minutes. Can you tell me where he’s been injured?”
“I think… I think he was raped,” Justin answered, closing his eyes.
“Is he bleeding anally?”
“Yeah…”
“Okay, is he bleeding anywhere else?”
“Justin, damn it…”
He heard the voice, weak, from the bathroom, and he shook himself, walking back into the bathroom. “He’s not bleeding anywhere else that I can see, but I think he might have some broken ribs, and his cheekbone… his eye’s swollen. Hang on.” He took the phone away from his ear. “I’m coming, Brian.”
“He’s conscious?”
“Yeah, but he seems really out of it… Brian? Brian!” Returning to Brian’s side, he dropped himself down to the shower stall. He placed his hand under Brian’s jawline, and gently lifted his face. His head rolled sideward. “Fuck, he just passed out!”
“Justin, calm down. What’s your boyfriend’s name?”
“Oh, oh, right. It’s Brian. He was out, at the club, I was asleep. What can I do?”
“You should try to staunch the bleeding, if you can, press a towel to the site.”
“Yeah… I did that. Oh, damn, he’s still wet, he’s on the floor, shit, I can’t lift him.…”
“Don’t move him. Dry him off if you can and get a blanket around him. He’s probably in shock. Can you feel a pulse?”
“Shit…” Justin moaned, and felt at Brian’s neck, felt the pulse which still beat there and conveyed the information. Then he rushed to comply with the rest of the instructions, drying Brian’s skin He had just put a blanket around Brian’s limp form, when the door buzzed.
He ran across the loft, almost falling down the stairs, and hit the door buzzer. “Ambulance?”
“EMT,” was the reply. As if it could be anyone else, Justin thought, somewhat hysterically. He waited for the two EMTs to come up in the elevator. They brought a stretcher, and Justin stepped back, trembling. And fell apart, a little bit.
Next Part
WARNING: Rape. of Brian.
Author's Note: I started writing this in the Summer of 2004, but at that point the subject matter was too disturbing for me to deal with re: B/J - and another fic like this one came out by another writer. So I saved it in the computer and forgot about it. I thought it had promise - just, I couldn't deal with the idea of it (which is why I have the warning up). Then, the other day, I stumbled across it, and my brain started insisting on telling me what might be happening with this story while I should be doing other things. So, I'm going to see where it goes.
Later, he would realize that he had been in shock, but of course he was unable to realize that at the time. Part of shock’s very condition.
If Brian had been thinking at all, he might have tried to locate a phone. But even had he been able to conceive of that, deciding who to call, what to say, well. That was something else altogether. The only awareness penetrating in terms of the concept of the phone, in any case, was that his cell phone was gone, somewhere in his jacket, somewhere with his car. No car. No cell phone. No phone calls. Shock simplified everything; thinking became quite linear.
Under extreme stress, human beings revert to their instinctual natures. And Brian’s instinct was to curl up the essence of the self underneath the skin of the self he put on display that was never really him, to shut the world out. To do that as completely as he needed, absolutely positively must at this moment, he had to get home. Home. The loft. He had been thrown out of the car about three miles from Tremont, and when he came to, he started walking, comprehending only a dazed urgency to get there, to get home. He walked the entire way, numbly plodding, not feeling his feet on the pavement, certainly not feeling…
No. Nothing, but the urgent demand in his head to get to the loft. This was not exactly a demand, it was far more than that. Certainly not a scream, but maybe something like the echoes of a scream from way, way, way far off. He had the odd sensation that if this weird lack of focus, this sensation of being wrapped up in cotton, if that were stripped away, underneath might whisper some weird, oddly disconnected notion that there might be a more directed screech from somewhere, but any directed thought was held at bay by this strange distance, this sucking vacuum, a huge space that surrounded him, through which penetrated only a strange thrumming, urgency, echo of something that might be a scream if he tried to clear away the sense of cotton blanketing him. The sensation moved him home, and that was enough to know. Home, Brian. Get to the loft.
Three o’clock in the morning, the streets were deserted. Not a good time to be out, the thought flashed through his head like the banner of an ad, flashing almost palpably before him, and he giggled at the warning that blinked in front of him, that it was bad to be out in the dark, you might get hurt. Memory of a long-off boast, isn’t that part of the thrill? The unknown, the danger…
The giggling sound seemed to come from somewhere else, and he started at its nearness. Then he realized it was his own voice, and it wasn’t stopping when he realized what he was. The weird sound echoed through the empty air.
Home. Home. Home.
Justin woke upon hearing the loft door open. He had been home since midnight, having returned early from Babylon. PIFA ran classes Friday afternoon, and he filled in a shift as a favor to Debbie when the dishwasher at the diner had simply not shown up. He hadn’t been in the mood to party that Brian was, and so he had made an early night of it, despite the fact that they had made plans to celebrate an account Brian had finally landed after a fairly long pursuit and vicious competition between Kinnetik and three other ad agencies, including a fairly prestigious New York firm. The days he would have stayed just because Brian had wanted him to were long past.
“Hey,” he called as he heard Brian pass through the bedroom. He couldn’t see him; since removing the light over the bed, the loft received its light at night from the street lights outside the windows. His eyes fell on the only illumination in the room, the faintly illuminated arms of the clock pointing toward 3:05.
Brian walked by, into the bathroom, and shut the door without a word.
Shit. Justin took a deep breath. Was Brian pissed? Justin had felt pretty awful about leaving early; Michael hadn’t been able to come out, Emmett was throwing a party for some charity event, and Ted of course no longer hung out at Babylon. Brian had actually asked him to hang out. Directly. Which made him feel only more terrible about feeling too awful to stay.
“Just one more, promise, I’ll make it worth your while,” Brian had cajoled, slipping his arm around his waist and sliding his hand down his hip, behind his ass, between his leg, skimming his balls.
Tempting. But no. “I can’t, I really feel like hell. But you stay, enjoy.”
“Fine,” Brian had shrugged, turning away as Justin hesitated for a fraction of a second. But again, no. They weren’t there any more, and Justin was damned if he was going to slip into the dysfunctional belief that he needed to take care of Brian before he took care of himself. That was Michael’s position; well, it used to be. Michael had a whole family of his own now, and somehow he and Brian were maintaining a much healthier distance in their friendship, whether because Michael was drawing his lines, or Brian had become more secure in general, Justin didn’t care. It was good for both of them. Hell, Justin thought, it’s good for me.
But he wasn’t going to become Mikey II, no way. And he really had felt like shit. So he had cast one last look at Brian’s back as Brian walked away, as Brian had already begun to cast his gaze around the dance floor, seeing who else was available. Justin shook his head, but accepted the fact that Brian could, and would, take care of his own needs, whatever they were, whatever drove him. So, so would Justin. In any case, the tricking had cut back since Justin had moved in. Not that they discussed it, and not that it had disappeared entirely, for either of them. There was no requirement, had been no discussion, never any commitment to an idea of being physically with only each other. They seemed to be headed in that direction. Maybe one day they would be there. Not today, but maybe some day. Fuck, Justin went whole weeks without anyone else touching him. In fact, it had been almost a month this time. Most likely, that day would arrive for Brian with their AARP memberships. But who knew?
Justin didn’t really care. He was content. He listened to the shower running, and dozed, waiting for Brian to come out of the bathroom. Maybe he’d be in the mood to have Justin apologize without words, Justin’s favorite method, god, he hated to talk to Brian, hated to discuss shit, just fucking let it happen and go with the flow. There seemed to be no better way to work and live with Brian Kinney. Maybe he’d get a chance to make up for needing to leave early, for leaving Brian alone. And he had been alone; all those tricks, nameless, faceless… it wasn’t exactly company. In fact, sometimes Justin felt really sad for Brian when he watched him, after a bad day, run through one, two, three or more blowjobs from anonymous sources in a row in the backroom. Anonymous sex may provide solace for the single self, but it didn’t provide a connection to the world outside the self. And it was there that one found peace. Fuck, how did he know this at 20, and Brian didn’t know this at 32? Or did he, and he resisted it? If that was the case, what did it say about his conscious desire to self-destruct? And how sad was that?
But talking would never change any of it; Brian was what he was. And Justin felt himself giving up on hoping he would find a way out of that self-destructive lifestyle. Actively trying to change Brian would only make him resent the effort, stress their relationship. As if it needed more of that. And, as Daphne so helpfully reminded him any time he lost his mind and professed some starry twinkified hope of a better Brian, “People don’t change for anyone but themselves. And then only because they have to, and never willingly.”
On that thought, Justin slipped into sleep, hoping that Brian had only gotten a single blow job if anything, tonight, that he had saved most of himself for what awaited him at home. One thing that was never difficult between them was the sex. In the meantime, he dozed off…
He was not sure why he snapped awake so abruptly, and he was not sure for how long he had been drifting in that half-sleep, but he suspected it had been a while. The shower was still running. And as the cobwebs of sleep cleared from his head, he became aware that the light illuminating the outer room was not that of the street lamps outside the window; there was a strange angle to the shadows, an odd cast to the light. He sat up, grabbed his sweat pants from off of the floor, drew them on, and lifted himself out of bed. He crossed to the top of the steps at the bedroom, looked out into the loft.
The front door was wide open, the light from the hall spilling in across the floor.
Well, fuck. Brian must be in quite the mood. He never left the door open, no matter how wasted he was. Not after the robbery - with the amount of grief he had visited on Justin’s head, anal retentive behavior regarding the door was almost to be expected on Brian’s part. Justin walked slowly down the steps. He couldn’t be that wasted, he thought as he moved across the living area, to pull the door shut and lock it, securing the alarm. Wasted Brian usually just passed out on the couch. After shutting the door.
How long had he been in the shower? Justin wondered. The familiar dim light from the street filtered in through the windows as Justin moved back to the bedroom. And realized, in the dark of the loft, that the light in the bathroom was off.
It would be pitch black in there. Justin felt the first stirrings of uneasiness as he moved cautiously toward the bathroom. He stared at the door, unsure as to whether he should go in. If he was being ridiculous, worrying needlessly. But still…
The dark bathroom. The shower, running for… he glanced at the arms of the clock glowing across the bedroom. Forty-five minutes?
“Brian?”
No reply, of course, not through the door, over the water. He pushed the door open. Pitch black. “Brian?”
No answer. Okay, this was not right. He walked in, announced, “I’m turning on the light. Okay?” And he flipped the light on.
Brian was still in the shower, but he was on the floor, huddled against the wall in a fetal position, not moving, his arms around his legs, knees up in his chest, forehead on his knees. The water was beating onto his head. Cold.
Justin stepped over to the stall cautiously and opened the door. “Brian? What’s going on?” He turned the water off. Brian didn’t move. Justin reached down, and touched his shoulder, and Brian flinched, pulling away. But he didn’t lift his head, merely twisted his body sideways. Justin squatted down, somewhat at a loss. “Brian?”
And then he saw the blood.
He hadn’t noticed it while the shower was going, but with the water off, a steady stream of crimson flowed into the drain. It was not insignificant. And it was not stopping.
“Oh, fuck,” Justin whispered, and with the sudden change in his tone, Brian lifted his head. Justin saw the developing black eye, the swelling cheekbone. They stared at each other, and Justin saw that Brian had a blankness about him. Shit. Shit, shit… “You’re bleeding. Pretty bad. Can you stand up?” What the fuck?
Brian stood, almost like a puppet on strings, closing his eyes and swaying, leaning against the wall to catch the sudden fall sideways. Justin stayed down in a squatting position, and looked up Brian’s body, saw that his side was turning purple, but there were no openings on his skin, nothing like a knife having done any work… and then he saw where the blood was coming from.
He left the shower stall quickly, on autopilot, and dove at the cabinet under the sink where he stored the towels for his art work, clean but ragged. He went back into the shower stall, breathing deep breaths in, in an effort to keep his heart from racing, forcing himself to keep the cold panic tightly reined. Brian had slid back down the wall, back onto his haunches. Justin ran water over one of the towels he brought back with him.
“Stand up,” he said. When Brian complied, he wiped the blood carefully off his ankle, up to his thigh, and then held one of the dry towels up between his legs. “You need to go to the hospital.”
“No.”
Brian hadn’t opened his eyes, and began sliding back down the wall.
“Brian…”
“No.”
Justin leaned toward him. “Something’s torn inside you. You’re bleeding, badly. Is the car in the garage?”
Just a head shake.
“Is the car outside?”
“I don’t know where the fucking car is!” Brian yelled, suddenly, loudly, raising his head and glaring wildly at Justin, who jumped back. Then he seemed to collapse back into himself, and his head dropped back onto his knees. Justin noticed that the towel under him was turning red. He stood up.
“I’m calling an ambulance.”
“Don’t you fucking dare!” Brian shouted, attempting to get up, but he swayed, leaned to the side in an almost drunken pitch, and sat back down abruptly, his hand clutching his head. Justin practically ran into the bedroom and snatched the phone from its cradle, dialing 911.
“Emergency operator, do you require fire, ambulance or police?”
“Ambulance,” Justin answered.
“Sir, may I have your address and to whom am I speaking?”
Justin gave the address and his name.
“What is the nature of the emergency?”
“My boyfriend’s been assaulted,” Justin answered. Now that he was speaking to someone in a position to assist, he felt the panic begin to take him over. “He’s bleeding pretty badly, I was sleeping when he came in and he got into the shower for about forty minutes, but it isn’t stopping…”
“All right, Justin, take a breath. We have an ambulance on the way, they’ll be there in five minutes. Can you tell me where he’s been injured?”
“I think… I think he was raped,” Justin answered, closing his eyes.
“Is he bleeding anally?”
“Yeah…”
“Okay, is he bleeding anywhere else?”
“Justin, damn it…”
He heard the voice, weak, from the bathroom, and he shook himself, walking back into the bathroom. “He’s not bleeding anywhere else that I can see, but I think he might have some broken ribs, and his cheekbone… his eye’s swollen. Hang on.” He took the phone away from his ear. “I’m coming, Brian.”
“He’s conscious?”
“Yeah, but he seems really out of it… Brian? Brian!” Returning to Brian’s side, he dropped himself down to the shower stall. He placed his hand under Brian’s jawline, and gently lifted his face. His head rolled sideward. “Fuck, he just passed out!”
“Justin, calm down. What’s your boyfriend’s name?”
“Oh, oh, right. It’s Brian. He was out, at the club, I was asleep. What can I do?”
“You should try to staunch the bleeding, if you can, press a towel to the site.”
“Yeah… I did that. Oh, damn, he’s still wet, he’s on the floor, shit, I can’t lift him.…”
“Don’t move him. Dry him off if you can and get a blanket around him. He’s probably in shock. Can you feel a pulse?”
“Shit…” Justin moaned, and felt at Brian’s neck, felt the pulse which still beat there and conveyed the information. Then he rushed to comply with the rest of the instructions, drying Brian’s skin He had just put a blanket around Brian’s limp form, when the door buzzed.
He ran across the loft, almost falling down the stairs, and hit the door buzzer. “Ambulance?”
“EMT,” was the reply. As if it could be anyone else, Justin thought, somewhat hysterically. He waited for the two EMTs to come up in the elevator. They brought a stretcher, and Justin stepped back, trembling. And fell apart, a little bit.
Next Part