Brian walked into his loft apartment dead tired. The night at Babylon had proven to be just what he needed to unwind. He walked over to his bedroom, which was elevated a few steps from the rest of his living space, and tossed his uniform onto the bed. He sank down next to it and surveyed his kingly domain. Kingly was right. The damned place had cost him a pretty penny and set him back years on his budget, but it was fucking worth it. Of course it just gave him even more incentive to get that damned promotion. The increase in pay would go a long way in paying the mortgage....might even make it easier to furnish the place.

Brian laughed when he remembered the drug raid they had made on the place five years earlier. A dealer had been shot in the place and the owner had been in desperate need of spendable cash. It hadn't taken much for Brian to convince the man he would be lucky to sell to the cop who knew the history of the place but didn't care. Once Brian was able to charm the socks off the loan officer at the bank, that he just happened to recognize from the baths, Brian got the financing needed and now the wide open spaces of the loft were all his...in twenty five years, give or take.

Brian knew he should get up, hang his uniform and get changed, but he was too exhausted. Instead he stretched out letting his legs dangle over the side of the bed and fell fast asleep. Brian woke with a start hours later and looked at his bedside clock. It was eight o'clock already? He couldn't believe he'd been like that for so long. Suddenly he remembered what had awakened him. He sat straight up and rubbed hard at his eyes, as if he could erase the images in his head. He had been dreaming about that blond kid he'd taken home the previous night. He couldn't get the image of the kid's eyes out of his mind. The boy had looked at Brian pleadingly, despite the surly attitude he displayed with it. There was something in those eyes that got to Brian.

Just like that, Brian realized what it was. He had seen that same look in his own eyes for many years whenever he looked in a mirror while growing up. The look said, 'please don't take me back to the house', but there was nothing else Brian could do and he knew it. The kid was underage and Brian had to do his job. He had known the father was a hard-ass the minute he heard him talk to his kid. Brian knew he couldn't save all the lost kids forced to live with the wrong kind of family. He had only been able to save himself and it had taken eighteen years to do that.

Brian didn't like thinking about those first eighteen years of his life. He hated not being in control of his life, and that was exactly what it had been like for him as a youngster. His father had bullied him from the time Brian's memories could form. His mother was a cold fish who stood back and ignored the bullying. She acted like Brian was doing her a favor by deflecting her husband's bad attitude off of her. The woman didn't have a protective bone in her body. His sister, who was only a year younger than him, was a chip off her mother's block. She catered to their father's every whim and sucked up to him in a way that made Brian's skin crawl. Brian could still remember the last day he spent in that house of horrors.

Brian's best friend, Michael, had a mother and uncle who were the salt of the earth. They had thrown one hell of a shindig to celebrate their boy's graduation from high school. Brian, of course, was invited and went to Deb's house to have the time of his life. In just a couple of days he would have his diploma and escape that house. He had a decent Summer job lined up that would afford him enough money for a cheap apartment near the college campus he would be attending on a full sports scholarship. Brian was one damned fine runner and an asset to any track team. He'd been given the option to continue his job working for the sporting store part time when school started to give him extra spending money so he was pretty well set for the next year. What Brian didn't know that night was that his old man was in one of his rare moods where he felt like bragging to all his buddies about his talented only son.

Jack Kinney had promised to bring Brian to the bar where all his buddies gathered in order to celebrate Brian's graduation on the same night as Deb's party. He was convinced he had mentioned it to his son, but was super embarrassed when the ungrateful kid hadn't shown up. In Jack's opinion Brian wouldn't have even made it through school without his father pushing him to succeed. The fact that Jack never even bothered to look at Brian's schoolwork from kindergarten on or gone to a single parent-teacher meeting in twelve years meant nothing. He began drinking with his buddies and making excuses for why Brian didn't show up. When Brian walked into the house at 2 a.m. Jack was waiting. It was the very last time the old man laid a hand on Brian. When Brian told him straight out that he had ten times more fun at Deb's than he ever would have with Jack's drunken pals, Jack swung with a hard right.

Jack was just drunk enough to be too unsteady on his feet and Brian was just sober enough to be in complete control of his movements. He dodged Jack's fist and landed a blow himself that sent Jack reeling into the living room wall. As the older man stumbled trying to rise, Brian stood ready, both fists raised in front of him. There must have been something in Brian's eyes because Jack shrank back against the wall again and stayed there. Only his wife's voice as she entered the living room and asked what was going on gave him the courage to stand up straight again and say something.

"You motherfucking piece of shit...I was all ready to show you some respect for somehow making it through high school and you treat me like this. You get your lazy ass out of my house right now, and don't come back. To think I've supported you and taken care of you all these years and this is the thanks I get. Well, you little bastard, you're on your own from now on. Maybe when you get out into the real world you'll learn to appreciate all I've done for you."

Brian stood back up tall and gave his father a look that would have withered a more intelligent and less drunken man. He strode purposefully up to his father who stood next to his mother. He stopped and looked them both dead in the eye...one face to the other.

"I'll be gone in an hour, you drunken old prick, and you'll never have to worry about me stepping into 'your' house again. And it will be cold enough to turn the devil's balls blue in Hell before I'll ever appreciate a minute of living under your roof, old man."

With that Brian went upstairs, packed two suitcases with the few personal things that meant anything to him and some clothes, and went down to his old car that he had lovingly restored with Michael and Uncle Vic's help the previous Summer. Brian drove to Deb's house and went to his graduation ceremony with the Novotny/Grassi family rather than his own. His dad didn't even show up, even though his mom and sister did. Brian saw little of his dad for the next eleven years. Only his graduation from college and later from the police academy brought out the supposed pride from his dad...the high school graduation fiasco all but forgotten, at least by Jack Kinney. The two pretended they were family on the rare two or three times a year that they saw each other, but Brian never forgot or forgave the hell his old man had put him through.

Brian suspected that young Taylor was suffering a similar fate, but it certainly wasn't his problem. He had enough to deal with in trying to get that damned promotion or figuring out what to do next if he didn't. Still, he really did wish he could have taken the kid anywhere else but home once he saw what the boy had to deal with. But wishing wouldn't do any good, so Brian forced the image of Justin's pleading eyes out of his head and went about his day.

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Justin woke up Saturday morning and moved carefully. If he got out of bed on the usual side he'd be forced to put pressure on his right side. That wouldn't do. He could still feel the pain from the blow his father had given him as he walked past the man to go to his room last night. His dad had been furious that a cop had been standing on his front step for all the neighbors to see. Thinking of the cop again brought a fresh feeling of anger to Justin. He had practically begged the man not to take him home, but noooo...he had to do his duty. Shit, Justin thought, maybe it was his own fault he got caught but that didn't mean the cop had to make it worse. Well fuck the cop...and fuck his father for being such a prick. It wasn't like he had actually broken any laws...yet.

Thinking of that brought a surprising smile to Justin's face. Damn, if only he hadn't been caught. That son-of-a-bitch Hobbs would have been royally screwed this morning. Justin laughed when he thought of Chris' face when he went out to hop into his souped up car and found he couldn't get in any of the doors. Every single one of them would have been glued shut if Justin had had his way. It was the least the bastard deserved.

Justin could still feel the way Chris had pinned him to the shower wall in the gym at school just because his fucking towel had slipped off his hips and fallen to the floor, and Justin had had the nerve to grin when he saw the supposed football stud standing there naked with this teeny tiny wiener between his legs. Justin knew a good cock from a bad one because he had been studying them for several years now. He loved the sight of cock. He had never touched another one outside of his own, but he was a really smart kid and he KNEW he liked...no, loved cock. He hadn't said anything to anyone...he didn't have any close friends outside of his next door neighbor Daphne...but he was smart enough to know that rather than being simply accepted as a loner and left alone he would become the school pariah if he admitted to his true feelings.

Justin didn't really enjoy getting in trouble, but he had done so a number of times through the years. Most of it was minor stuff that he did to get a rise out of his father. He adored his mom, but she never stood up for him. It was like she had blinders on where his dad was concerned. Justin's biggest problem was how smart he was. He hated injustice and had a tendency to open his mouth to the wrong people. He was known for talking back to teachers, principals, and/or authority figures if he thought they were wrong. That didn't always sit well with them. He had been called a hooligan ( he had spray painted over the notices that had been put up announcing some rather harsh restrictions given all students because of the poor behavior of only a few). He had been called a troublemaker (he had organized a sit-down strike at the school cafeteria when the food they kept serving continued to be subpar despite the high tuition fees the private school charged their parents). He had even been called a juvenile delinquent even though he had never actually broken a serious law or hurt another soul. Justin's teacher's knew the young man was smart...maybe too smart for his own good...but they also knew that there was an angry young man behind that angelic looking face.

No one knew just how angry Justin really was. He was sick and tired of being picked on. He either was bullied at school by a certain set of neanderthals, led by Chris Hobbs who hadn't liked Justin since Kindergarten, or he was bullied even worse in his own home by a father that he couldn't please no matter how hard he tried. Sometimes, when Craig Taylor was putting him down for all his supposed faults, Justin was overwhelmingly tempted to throw out into the conversation the one fault he had that his dad would surely go ballistic over. He had heard his father's cracks about homos enough to know the man hated the gays of the world. It would be a delicious bit of irony to throw the fact that his son was one of 'those queers' in his face. Something told Justin that it would be a big mistake to indulge that fantasy. He wasn't ready to test those limits quite yet.

Justin had made up his mind about two things, however. One...he had had his fill of being bullied and the next time anyone, including his dad, tried to pick on him he was going to stand up for himself. Fuck the consequences. Two...If he ever decided to strike back again he would be a whole hell of a lot smarter and more careful. He wasn't getting caught by that cop or any other cop ever again.

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The weekend ended much too fast as always. Brian got all his chores done for the weekend and even partied hard on Saturday night. He kicked the latest trick that he'd picked up at Babylon on Saturday night out of his bed and apartment first thing Sunday morning and spent the rest of the day relaxing. Sunday night he enjoyed the home-cooked meal that his pretend mom, Deb, served up to her son and his best friends. He wondered again why he hadn't lucked out with a family like Mikey had. Deb and her brother had been loving and staunch supporters of her son from the very first day she got him to admit he liked boys. It didn't hurt that his Uncle Vic was an open and out gay man himself. Deb, Vic, and Michael had become Brian's surrogate family and he was fine with it. They had a lot more love to offer him than the Kinney clan ever did.

Before long Brian was back on his beat. He started his afternoon off with good news so he was feeling pretty damned cheerful. Word came down that the head of the detective squad in the Homicide division was going to announce the names of two men from the beat who were going to receive promotions to Detective by the end of the week. Detective Carl Horvath had a reputation for fairness and Brian had a good vibe on his chances this time. As he hit the streets with his partner, Andy, he just prayed it wasn't false hope he was living for.

Andy was a ruddy looking redhead with enough freckles on his face to draw a design with if one was so inclined. He was a friendly enough guy but entirely too lackadaisical about his job for Brian's taste. Brian felt that Andy would be far better off in some desk job where he could sit around drinking coffee and chatting up other cops or suspects to his heart's content. The only time the man was animated was when he was jawing about something...usually some nonsensical bit of nothing that bored Brian to tears. He decided that tonight it didn't matter. If he was right, he wouldn't have to put up with Andy much longer.

Most of the late afternoon went by with much of nothing happening. It was right about seven when everything changed. The men had just finished checking on the report of a customer trying to skip out on his restaurant bill in one of the finer steak houses in the upscale neighborhood they patrolled. The owner's son had blocked the customer's car with his own to prevent him from leaving the restaurant parking lot and the man was threatening bodily harm. It had taken a half hour to calm the customer and the owner down enough to get the air cleared. Apparently the customer had left his credit card on the table with his blind date still sitting there when he went to the restroom. When he came back he saw the date leaving and followed her out. The woman disappeared around the building and the customer presumed that she had either stolen his credit card or paid the bill and just left. Either way he was anxious to catch up to her, thus the attempt to drive off. Once he finally accepted his responsibility and paid the bill with a second credit card the owner was happy and the customer drove off still grumbling about the stolen credit card he would have to cancel.

The minute they were back in their squad car a call came over the radio of a stolen car. Brian recognized the address instantly as the same house he had taken that kid, Justin Taylor, to on Friday. The house was less than a mile away so Brian called it in and the two officers pulled out of the parking lot and headed in the direction of the Taylor house. When they arrived, they found Craig Taylor pacing in his driveway next to a dark blue minivan. The 2000 Porsche 911 car that had been sitting there the other night was conspicuously missing. Taylor was at Brian's vehicle before he and Andy could exit their car. He was fuming and barely able to control his temper. Brian did his best to calm the man down and was finally able to understand what his complaint was. According to Taylor, his son had come home with a black eye and a note from the principal. He was to be suspended for three days for fighting in school. Craig had been furious, what with it being so close to the end of the school year and all, and the two had argued loudly. The next thing he knew, he heard the engine of his brand new car being started and saw his kid racing out of the driveway. He didn't have permission to drive the car and Craig wanted him stopped.

It took a lot of coaxing on Brian's part to finally convince the angry father that it would be far more detrimental to the family name to have his son picked up for grand theft auto than simply brought home again with his tail between his legs. Brian promised to keep an eye out for the vehicle and young Taylor and simply report the incident and his son as a runaway. It was obvious that Craig would be perfectly content to see his son in jail for a while, but the combination of his wife's pleadings and the officer's determined persuasiveness finally ruled the day. As Brian drove away with the license plate number and description written in his notepad, he wondered to himself what had REALLY happened to make the kid run off again and do something so stupid. He would certainly ask the kid if he found him.

To be continued.....................................