"Rise and shine, Sunshine!" came an exuberant exclamation from somewhere near Justin, causing pain to shoot through his head. 

"Ugh," he grumbled, ready to murder whoever had dared to disturb him so early in the morning. He must've fallen asleep like a minute ago.

"I said, rise and shine!" the shrill voice called again, followed by a peal of laughter.

Justin moaned. Debbie.

"Kid, you look like you got run over by a station wagon full of lesbians."

Justin cringed at the thought. The slight movement jarred his balls, and he moaned again, louder this time. Slitting his eyes open, he squinted at the exuberant redhead, who was standing right next to his bed, hands on her hips.

"C'mon, Kiddo," his mum urged. "Get your rear in gear! We've got cookies to bake!"

Justin smiled weakly at her. He'd been looking forward to the baking marathon, but now the notion of mixing batter for cookie dough - especially dealing with all the eggs - made his stomach roil. "Uh, what time is it?" he mumbled. If it was, like, really early, maybe he could talk his mum into letting him sleep a little longer.

Debbie leaned over and tapped the clock on the bedside table, her finger joining Captain Astro's as the numbers flipped over. "It's half past eight. I let you sleep in long enough, Sunshine. Up and at 'em!"

The boy's nose scrunched up as he got a whiff of his underarm, which was right next to his face. Fuck, but did he ever stink. "Erm, just lemme wash up a bit first, 'kay?" 

Debbie eyed him suspiciously. "If you're not downstairs, in the kitchen, ready to roll out dough by nine, I'll be back, you hear?"

His eyes heavy-lidded, Justin nodded his agreement. Maybe he could sleep for another twenty minutes, swipe at his pits, and put on some deo. That should mask the worst of the stench.

"I'll be dousing you with a pitcher of ice water if I have to come back," Deb warned him, "so-"

Justin shot up in the bed, looking at his mum in consternation. Was she serious?

"I thought that'd do the trick," Debbie announced, her satisfaction clear. She was cackling as she strolled out of his bedroom, leaving the door wide open.

Justin sighed. He might as well give himself a more thorough washing-up, now that was awake. Getting clean, even just sort of, was bound to make him feel better, right? Balancing on one hip so that his testicles wouldn't brush against the mattress, he edged over to the side of the bed and stood up, his entire body objecting to the manoeuvre.

He swayed in place, shifting unsteadily from one foot to the other, his stomach pitching and rolling in synchrony. "Fuck," he groaned, dismayed; he felt way worse than last night. The pain radiating from his testicles and knees seemed to have doubled overnight, doubtless because of dancing for hours. On top of the injuries and queasiness, he had a headache that was building in intensity; he was dizzy as all get out; and he didn't want to be on his feet. At this rate, he wasn't going to make it down the hall to the bathroom, never mind downstairs to the kitchen.

Placing a hand on the nightstand, Justin rode out the bout of dizziness, grateful when it eased enough that he could stand upright without worrying about toppling over. He needed some kind of pick-me-up or he'd never make it through the long day stretching out before him - baking with Deb, his shift at the diner, and another night of dancing at Babylon. He shivered a little, suddenly worried that the two importunate men from last night might return to the club. What if no one - Oscar, Brian, heck, even Michael - was around to help him out this time?

He'd just make sure they couldn't catch him alone, Justin reassured himself, another tremor travelling through his body. He looked anxiously around the room, making sure there wasn't anything more threatening than a cardboard cutout of Captain Astro lying in wait for him. His gaze caught on the clothes he'd discarded at the foot of the bed before crawling beneath the covers last night, and he realised he had something ready at hand which should both boost his energy and serve as a painkiller, if his hazy memory served him well anyway.

Bending over, his knees and his groin throbbing, Justin scooped up his cargo pants and felt around in one of the side pockets. "Shit!" the teenager hissed. Nothing there. He hurriedly checked the other pocket, heaving a sigh of relief when his fingers closed around something. A couple beats later he was looking down at the small packet of pills Sven had pressed on him in the wee hours of the morning. 

A wolf whistle interrupted the mental ‘thank fuck' he was sending to the other go-go boy. Justin jumped, scared out of his wits, and almost toppled over on the bed.

"Now that's a sight to perk me up in the morning," came a comment from the doorway. "And to-"

"Victor Antonio Grassi!" Debbie's strident voice easily carried up the stairs, cutting off whatever her brother had been about to add. "You old reprobate. Leave Sunshine alone, or the kid'll never get down here to help me with the baking."

His heart thumping against his ribcage, Justin fretted that Vic might have caught sight of the pills. He could probably explain them away as allergy med-

Vic's good-natured reply eased his concern; Justin's body must have blocked the older man's view of what he was doing. "Don't get your tits in a twist, Sis," Vic bellowed. "I'm just admiring a shapely derriere." 

"For fuck's sake," Debbie yelled back. "You can admire Sunshine's backside later on - like over the breakfast you promised to make, little brother."

Justin was left frozen in fear, standing in the middle of his room, long minutes after Vic left the doorway. That was seriously close, he thought in a panic, his heart fluttering like a little rabbit's. He didn't want to imagine the reaction, the disapproval, the disappointment...

Swallowing harshly, Justin forced himself to move from his rigid position, slowly straightening his posture and carefully unclenching his fist. The white pills glared at him from his palm.

A single pill hadn't helped much last night, Justin remembered, so maybe he should take more? Before he could lose his nerve, he popped two into his mouth, then grabbed the half-empty water bottle from his nightstand and washed them down. 

"Blech." The blond's face screwed up in disgust; the water was really stale. He should've gotten a bottle from the fridge instead of grabbing the one on the kitchen counter, which had probably been there forever. It likely even contained some new life form by now, he thought to himself in perverse interest as he eyed the bottle in his hand. Well, the water seemed clear enough, so it was probably fine. It was too late to do anything about it anyway.

Now he could go and attempt to shower, and hopefully the pills would kick in by the time he had to get dressed.

Showering was more difficult than he'd expected. He turned on the shower to avoid the freezing water before stepping into the tub, but his crotch was so sensitive that no matter the temperature, the washcloth he used to wipe himself down hurt anyway. Standing back from the spray so that it didn't land directly on his injuries didn't really help at all. When he reached his bruised knees, which looked even more colourful this morning - vivid purples, blues, and reds - Justin encountered a similar problem. His skin was so tender that it hurt to dab at the swollen tissue.

As he was washing off the soap off his knees, he suddenly wondered why Rico hadn't commented on the bruising last night. Then he realised that the flashing strobe lights must have disguised the injury; the colours from the lights would've merged with the discolouration around his kneecaps. Otherwise, the bartender would doubtless have noticed and asked what had happened.

Justin's efforts to get clean were haphazard at best, the lad whimpering whenever the flannel came anywhere near his injured scrotum, but he finally succeeded in soaping his body down before rinsing off. He even managed to wash his hair, leaning forward so that his head was under the streaming water, stepping back, applying shampoo, rubbing it into his hair with one hand - his other hand was planted firmly against the wall so that he wouldn't topple over if he got dizzy again - and then bending in half again to rinse out the shampoo. 

In the end, he spent pretty much all of the time limit his mum had given him on getting ready, before carefully making his way downstairs.

The redhead was in full baker mode already. There was flour everywhere; bowls of ingredients littered the side counter; and the KitchenAid mixer was whirring away. Vic had taken over the stove and had bacon sizzling in one pan, pancakes in another. As Justin watched, he slid a couple of the flapjacks out of the pan and reached into the oven, setting them on a plate.

Moving slowly to compensate for dizziness and spikes of pain from his testicles, Justin entered the kitchen and was hit with the aroma of coffee, which was dripping into the carafe. Together with the bacon, it was too much. He halted and leaned against the wall just inside the kitchen, breathing shallowly through his mouth.

Vic looked over at him. "How many flapjacks for you, Kiddo?"

"Um, I'm not really hungry?" he told the man hesitantly, aware of how foreign the words sounded coming from his mouth.

Vic's eyebrows shot up, and Debbie shrieked, "Not hungry?" turning away from the mixer to look at him.

"Uh, yeah. Er, I mean no," Justin corrected himself. "I've still got, you know, a bit of an upset stomach."

Debbie shook her head furiously. "No, you need to eat. Maybe giving your stomach something filling will actually help."

"Um-"

"Just try a bit? You don't have to eat the bacon, but maybe just some of the pancakes?" she suggested, watching him closely.  

Justin paled. The thought of taking even a couple bites of the flapjacks made him want to upchuck.

"Or I can make you some dry toast if you think that would go down better," Vic offered. "And some of the ginseng peppermint tea to go with it?"

Dry toast didn't sound very exciting, and it wasn't like he actually had food poisoning or a stomach bug. Maybe it would do him good to eat a little something. And the herbal tea sounded - way better than coffee anyhow. "Erm, maybe a cup of that tea with one of the pancakes," he replied, judging the fight to be lost.

"Good." Debbie's intent expression relaxed a bit.

Good, Justin silently echoed. His mum was appeased for the moment. Now if he could just keep her from cottoning on that he was in pain.

"Why don't you sit your arse down?" Vic recommended. "Take a load off. I'll bring the tea and flapjack over to the table, along with heartier breakfasts for me and Sis."

Shit. He could hardly say he'd rather stand. That would make Debbie and Vic suspicious for sure. At least the chairs had padding - unlike the student desks at St James - Justin tried to console himself, perching gingerly on the very edge of the one he usually sat on.

Twenty-eight agonising minutes later - Justin had his eye on the microwave clock - they finished eating. The blond lad had consumed almost one third of a pancake and finished his cuppa.

Debbie studied his plate before proclaiming, "You did good, Sunshine. Those flapjacks Vic makes are big suckers, so that's actually a decent amount you consumed. Any more and it might come right back up, so it's good that you stopped there."

Justin's stomach lurched and he swallowed hard, determined to keep the food down. He just hoped it really did make him feel better, considering he wasn't actually treating an upset stomach. He was fairly certain the tea, on the other hand, would do him no harm, and it was unquestionably a good idea to drink lots of liquid with the drugs he'd gotten from Sven. He made to stand up, murmuring, "Um, I could go for another cuppa. Why don't I-"

"You sit your fanny right back down!" Debbie ordered shrilly. "After not eating for a coupla days, you need to give yourself time to digest that food."

"Sis is right," Vic chimed in. "I'll make you another cuppa, ragazzo; just hand me your cup."

Double shit, Justin thought, reluctantly passing the cup across the table. 

Winking at the teen as he stood up, Vic added, "Relax while you can. Deb's really a slave-driver when she gets into a baking frenzy."

"Ain't that the truth!" Debbie chuckled, placing her palms on the table and levering herself up from the chair. "I'd best get right back to it. Sunshine, you can join me after you finish that cuppa - and you'd better not gulp it down 'cause I'll be watching!"

Since Deb had already proven that she had eyes in the back of her head, Justin didn't doubt her for a second. He sat back down with ill grace, pouting a little.

His mum laughed at him. "Spare me the sad face, Sunshine. It won't do you any good."

Vic placed a new teabag in Justin's cup, poured hot water over it, and left it to steep while he rinsed the dishes and placed them in the dishwasher. After a quick wipe down of the stovetop, he removed the teabag and set the gently steaming tea in front of the teenager, declaring, "I'm getting out of the line of fire. You two have fun baking."

If he ever got to help, Justin thought morosely, watching as Debbie moved deftly around the kitchen, adding spices to a couple of the dry mixtures, not even bothering to use a measuring spoon. How the fuck could she be sure she'd gotten the amount right? he wondered. He blew out a breath across his tea, which probably didn't do a damned thing to cool the liquid enough so that it wouldn't burn his tongue, and drummed his fingers impatiently on the table.

Debbie turned her head and smiled at him. "Why don't you tune the radio to one of the stations that plays Christmas music 24/7, Sunshine?"

Justin sprang up like a jack-in-the-box, thrilled to have an excuse to stand up and keep his balls from getting flattened against the chair seat. "You want the rock ‘n' roll stuff?" 

"Heck, yeah!" Debbie agreed enthusiastically. "We need something to pep us up, not put us to sleep."

Justin turned the dial to FM 94.5, quickly moving on to 99.7 when he heard the low-key choral music on WSHH-FM. He hoped the pills he'd taken were going to kick in soon, giving him a boost and reducing the pain. It had been an hour since he downed them, and as far as he could tell, the only difference was that he felt even more out of it than before. He wished he had some of Sven's magical white powder since that was much more effective than the pills. Fleetingly, he wondered why Sven didn't charge anything for the drugs he kept handing out like candy, but then he shrugged, deciding it didn't matter. It wasn't like he was gonna ask the other go-go boy for drugs ever again.

"Oh, that's a good one," Debbie averred, swaying her hips and moving her feet in rhythm with The Kinks' Father Christmas.

Justin leaned against the hutch, slowly drinking his tea, grinning as he watched the redhead move to the beat. He wished he felt better, so he could give his mum a whirl around the kitchen. He'd do that before Christmas, the blond promised himself. Dancing with Deb and Vic was fun; the old folks really knew how to move, he thought approvingly. Unlike Brian, the teenager considered with a puzzled frown. The best his lover managed was a kind of shuffling motion from side to side, accompanied by a grinding of the hips - which, of course, left his tricks so dazed with lust that they didn't care that the brunet stud couldn't dance for shit. "What's wrong with Brian?" he heard himself blurt out.

"Whaddaya mean?" Debbie enquired.

"Why can't he dance? I mean, he was, like, around you and Vic all the time, right? Shouldn't he have picked up the basics from you?"

Deb shook her head, smiling fondly. "That boy's got no sense of rhythm. Neither does my Michael; it's like the dancing gene skipped a generation or something."

Justin blinked in confusion. Was the ability to dance genetic?

"It's not like I didn't try to teach them - Vic too," Debbie continued, a reminiscent gleam in her eyes. "We got our toes stepped on so much, I'm surprised they didn't fall off. Finally, we gave up and just let them do whatever arrhythmic two-step they could manage."

Justin giggled. That was the perfect way to describe what could only loosely be called ‘dancing.' Speaking of Brian, he thought, his brow furrowing, where was the man last night? Didn't he promise Justin he would give him a ride home from Babylon? Given the to-do Brian made about promises - he didn't like to make them because then he had to keep his word - he should have been at the club. Maybe he should give him a call? Something could've happened to Brian, just like it almost had-

A shadow blocked the overhead light and Justin shrank back against the hutch.

"Sunshine?" Debbie asked from right in front of him. "Didn't you hear me?"

Justin looked at the redhead blankly, his heart racing and a cold sweat breaking out on his forehead. It was just his mum, he told himself, not the assailants from last night. He glanced around, confirming he was in Debbie's kitchen, not outside of Babylon. Swallowing hard, he gathered the wherewithal for a response. "Huh?"

The maternal woman reached out and placed the back of one hand against his forehead, before removing it and wiping it off on her apron. "No temperature," she assessed; "that's good. You seem awfully out of it, though, Kiddo," she added, frowning. "Maybe I shouldn't have rousted you out of bed this morning."

Crap. He didn't want Debbie to guess that there was more wrong with him than a stomachache. "I'm fine," he insisted. "Just, you know, thinking about Brian."

Debbie laughed, as he'd hoped she would. "You boys... always mooning about Brian," she chided, patting him on the cheek. "How about you moon over some cookie dough instead, huh?"

"Sure," Justin readily agreed. As long as he could stand, he was certain he'd be fine.

"Wanna try making gingerbread wands?"

 Justin nodded. Maybe learning a new recipe would distract him from how rotten he felt.

Debbie handed him a well-used recipe card. "You can get the measurements from this. Sift the flour and measure it out, and then I'll show you what to do next."

"Okay." This should be easy Justin thought. Nothing to it.

As he dumped flour into the sifter to pre-sift it, he wondered whether it was going bad or something - it felt really weird and starchy on his hands. It couldn't be bad, though; Deb was using flour from the same sack, and he knew she would have noticed if it had gone off. It was really a strange sensation, though, he thought, rubbing the palms of his hands together.

Fortunately, it didn't take him long to finish with the dry ingredients. 

"Melt the butter and set it to one side," Debbie instructed, "and then combine the molasses, sugar, pumpkin spice mix, and black pepper in a four-quart saucepan and bring the mixture to boil." She tilted her chin at the cupboard with the pans. "Use a medium heat; it won't take long."

"It's boiling," Justin reported in short order. The gloopy brown mixture looked horrid, and the smell of the molasses increased his nausea. He worried that he might lose the pancake he'd eaten.

"Take it off the heat," his mum directed, "and stir in the baking soda and then the butter."

Justin looked at her for further guidance once that was done.

"You're just about done with this part of the process," Deb commented. "Then you can play with the dough."

"Like Play-Doh?" Justin had loved the stuff when he was a little kid, although Craig hadn't been pleased to come home to him making fake cookies and had yelled at his mother about turning him into a sissy.

"Exactly," Debbie agreed, tongue in cheek. "We've gotta stay in touch with our ‘inner child,' Sunshine." She eyed Justin sidelong. "Not that you're far removed from that."

Had his mum just called him a child? Justin narrowed his eyes at the woman, picking up a potholder with the intention of tossing it at her.

Debbie lifted an eyebrow in return, egging him on.

Justin set the potholder back down.

"Good choice," Debbie approved, snapping a dish towel for emphasis. "You wouldn't stand a chance in a kitchen battle, Kiddo." 

‘Would too,' was on the tip of the blond's tongue, but he thought better of voicing it. No need to prove her point. "What should I do now?" he asked instead, his lower lip jutting out only a little.

"Take a fork and stir in the egg, and then the flour."

Justin soon had a doughy mix that was remarkably similar to Play-Doh, although darker in colour because of the molasses.

"I floured a board for you." Debbie motioned at the adjacent counter. "Knead the dough until it's smooth, and then divide it in half. Wrap one half in a piece of plastic and set it to one side."

As Justin kneaded the dough, the legs of his cargo pants rasped against each other, and his skin tingled strangely. He could swear the hair on his legs was standing on end. Weird, the way his skin was so sensitive today.

"What next?" he asked once the dough was free of lumps and had been divided in half.

"Lightly flour the rolling pin that's next to the board, and roll the dough into a twelve-inch by eight-inch rectangle, leaving it about a quarter-inch thick."

Justin looked around but didn't see what he needed. "Erm, where's the ruler?"

"Ruler?" Debbie's eyebrows shot up in surprise. "Surely you can eyeball it so you end up with one foot by two thirds of another."

The blond teen looked at the dough with trepidation. "Not and be, like, really accurate. With a ruler, though-"

Deb shook her head in fond exasperation. "It doesn't have to be exact, Sunshine. Just approximate the size of the rectangle I gave you, making sure the dough is about a quarter-inch thick.

Justin knew he'd feel better about this if he could apply actual measurements. "Quarter inch," he muttered, trying to visualise it as he floured the rolling pin.

"Look," Deb tromped over to him and grabbed his right thumb in one hand, "it's roughly one inch from the tip of your thumb to the first knuckle. You want one quarter of that, which is about half of your thumbnail." She raised up his arm and drew a line from the inside of his elbow to his wrist. "And it's approximately eight inches between these two points. Go up to your knuckles and you've got a foot. Just use those as your guides and you'll be fine."

Justin sighed. He'd feel much better if he had a ruler. What kind of measurements were a forearm and a thumbnail anyway? It wasn't like everyone's arm was the same length, so what would Debbie do if it was Brian in the kitchen with her? He immediately grinned at the silly notion - as if Brian would ever use a kitchen for cooking, much less baking.

"That's better." The redhead smiled back at him. "Baking should be fun, Sunshine. And unlike a cake, the measurements don't have to be just right for gingerbread wands. A little variation in thickness and length is A-okay."

Justin's face pinkened, his mind immediately going to something else that varied in girth and length, often by more than just ‘a little.'

Debbie must've read his mind, or realised what she'd just said. "There too, Kiddo," she chuckled. "There too."

His tongue sticking out as he concentrated on creating a rectangle from the dough, Justin moved the rolling pin to and fro, stopping a couple times to measure the width and height with his forearm. Sure enough, the depth was about half of his thumbnail when he got done.

Debbie handed him a pizza cutter. "Cut the dough into eight-inch-long strips."

"Don't they make boards with ruler markings around the edges?" came Justin's plaint.

"It's not rocket science," the redhead re-enforced what she'd said before. "Just eyeball it, Sunshine. C'mon, you do that all the time when you draw, doncha?"

Well, yeah, he did. Justin blinked in confusion, wondering why he was making such a big deal out of this, and immediately set to work, cutting the dough into straight, even strips in less than fifteen seconds.

"Now put those puppies on a sheet of parchment paper on a large cookie sheet, about one inch apart."

Debbie handed him a custard dish with something gooey inside and a small basting brush. "I beat an egg white for you. Brush each of the strips with the egg white, add some sprinkles, and - voila! - they're ready to go in the oven."

"Sprinkles?"

Deb opened the cupboard where she kept the spices that didn't fit on the wall rack. "Choose your poison, Sunshine. We've got red, gold, white, blue, green - you name it. Just make them look Christmassy."

Justin smiled. This really was fun. Just as he reached for a couple of the containers of edible glitter, however, a wave of dizziness assailed him, and he lowered his hand to the counter, leaning heavily on it until the spinning sensation eased.

"You know, Kiddo," - Debbie felt his forehead again - "you just might have food poisoning. Vic said something about a bad lunch you had at school?"

"Uh, yeah." The teen latched onto the proffered reason for his supposed illness. "Some of the other kids were complaining too." Not that that was anything new; Justin couldn't remember the last time a genuinely appetising meal had been served at St James.

"Fevers are pretty common with food poisoning," Deb noted. "But that's hardly the only symptom. There's headaches, nausea, vomiting, diar-"

Paling, Justin held up a hand to put a halt to the list of symptoms. His breakfast was gonna revisit him at any moment if she kept that up.

"Hmpf." His mum packed a world of disapproval into that single, scornful word. "You went to Babylon last night and danced despite feeling like shit, huh?"

Fuck, Deb must've checked his room and saw that he wasn't there after she got home from the diner. Up till now, he'd held onto a faint hope that maybe she didn't want to disturb him and left his bedroom door closed. "I felt better then," Justin blatantly lied. "But then, you know, the nausea got worse again after I got home." At least that wasn't a fib; the pain had increased exponentially overnight.

Arms akimbo, the redhead scoffed, "I wasn't born yesterday, Sunshine. If you were suddenly doing so much better, why'd you sneak out without telling Vic you were leaving?"

"He was sleeping and I didn't want to disturb him?" Justin wanted to smack himself for turning what should've been a confident assertion into a question.

"Uh-huh." Debbie looked Justin up and down skeptically. "You gonna miraculously feel better before your dance gig tonight too?"

A deer in the headlights expression on his face, Justin could only stare at his mum.

"Tell you what, Kiddo," Debbie proposed in a no-nonsense voice, "if you can make it through your shift at the diner - I'll check in with Kiki to make sure you didn't collapse or anything - I'll agree it's okay for you to go to Babylon."

Justin opened his mouth to protest that he was old enough to decide for himself if he was up to dancing or not, but he wisely amended what he was going to say to, "What do you think of a candy cane effect for these wands?"

"You can manage that with those little sprinkles?" Deb questioned eagerly, sidetracked from her inquisition.

Bestowing a smile on his mum, Justin mentally congratulated himself on successfully redirecting the conversation. "I think so," was what he said out loud.

"Mmph," Brian protested as he struggled to open his eyes. "Fuckin' sunshine," he indistinctly added as an errant ray hit him dead in the eye that he'd just slitted open.

What the fuck was going on? he wondered, lifting a hand to shield his vision and turning his blurry, one-eyed gaze toward his rumpled bed, which looked like a cyclone had hit it. He worked his mouth in disgust, trying to dislodge whatever was stuck in it, finally spitting out a white something-or-other. A feather? he questioned, puzzled. He lifted his head and blinked rapidly, attempting to unstick his glued-together eyelids so he could focus on the object.

Yeah, it was definitely a feather, albeit a small one. Wait... hadn't the blond brat been here when he fell asleep? Brian vaguely remembered him having wings. That didn't really make sense - he could attest that Justin was no angel - but the boy must still be here, right? That would explain why the bed was such a mess.

Brian hawked up what looked like part of another feather and slowly turned his head from one side to the other, searching for his not-angel. "Ow!" he groaned, his head pounding. Another ray of sunlight shone through his blinds and pierced him directly in the eyes. "Jushun," he called out querulously, the twat's name muffled as he landed face down in his pillow.

No response. Where'd the kid go anyhow? Brian had no desire to open his eyes again, not yet anyroad, so he instead listened intently for sounds from elsewhere in the loft. The water wasn't running in the shower; there was no noise from the kitchen - and no aroma of coffee, dammit; and he didn't hear the TV.

"Justin?" he tried again, raising his head from the pillow, the teen's name more intelligible this time.

Still no answer. Distracted by the foul taste in his mouth, Brian once more spat saliva out, figuring he could hardly damage his pillow at this point. What the fuck? His eyes narrowing, Brian studied what should have been his pillow but was now largely a bunch of loose feathers. The pillowcase was missing - Brian had no idea where it had gotten off to - but it must be with the zippered pillow protector since that was missing too. He must have been pummeling his pillow or something because there was a large tear through which the feathers were escaping. No wonder he'd inhaled a mouthful of feathers; his lips must've been directly on top of the ‘rift.' It looked like he might've drooled in that spot too, before he hawked up the downy crap.

So much for his fucking expensive down pillow, Brian thought, glaring at the offending item. He heaved out a resigned breath as he tried to determine how it could've gotten into this state. His nose immediately scrunched up in disgust - his breath was fucking disgusting. 

He was gonna have to get up and brush his teeth before he could hope to think clearly, Brian realised. Come to think of it, there was another pressing need he should attend to as well. He rolled over to the side of the bed and stood up slowly, his head pounding the whole time and his stomach lurching uneasily. What the fuck had died in his mouth anyway? he wondered as he shuffled the few steps separating him from the bathroom. A surfeit of skunks? He rolled his eyes, the slight movement making him wince, as he recalled the blond brat sharing, for fuck knew what reason, the name for a group of the white-striped, stinky critters. 

Right before he staggered through the doorway into the bathroom, Brian glanced toward the sofa and saw an empty bottle of Beam resting on its side on the coffee table, an ashtray with what looked like the remains of a couple joints next to it. The previous afternoon came flooding back then, parts of it anyway. Christ, if there was a klezmer band playing in his head, he mused, smiling a little in schadenfreude, then Cynthia - and Theodore - must really be in dire straits. Neither of those lightweights had his stamina. In fact, Ted probably had the entire marching band for the Tartans banging away in his head.

As Brian fumbled for his toothbrush, he made the mistake of looking in the mirror above the sink - and promptly dropped the toothbrush. He had a bizarre quiff sticking up on the left side of his head; there was something stuck between his teeth; and he had such deep bags under his eyes that his large wardrobe would probably fit in there. That French anti-aging cream he shelled out beaucoup bucks for was for shit. He might just as well bin the stuff, he decided, reaching into the medicine cabinet again.

It was only then that he realised he'd never replaced the cream after the burglary. Maybe he'd give the French gunk another chance. That wouldn't do him any good right now, however; it would take at least five days after he ordered it from the specialty store in New York for the cream to arrive.

Abandoning his teeth-cleaning for the moment, Brian turned toward the toilet and relieved himself. At least he'd had the sense to strip down last night, even if he couldn't exactly remember undressing. Otherwise, with his fingers unusually clumsy, he wasn't sure he could have undone the buttons that fastened his jeans. 

Christ, but did his urine ever stink, he thought, wrinkling his nose at the potent odour and quickly flushing the toilet. His bladder emptied - it had taken what seemed like forever but was probably something under thirty seconds to get rid of all the bourbon - Brian felt more comfortable and was ready to tackle the next task. 

This time, he had the sense to floss before brushing, first sliding the waxed strand between the two upper teeth with the dark fleck stuck in the middle. Weird, he thought, glancing at the floss after digging the whatsit out - it appeared to be a fleck of cannabis. He'd been smoking the weed, not eating it, so that shouldn't be there. Shrugging off the oddity, he reached into the shower and turned the water on, making sure it was at his preferred setting of thirty-nine degrees centigrade. The hotter the better to clean his pores.

While the water warmed, Brian brushed his teeth, his mouth soon acquiring a fresh, minty taste from the Tom's of Maine toothpaste. For good measure, he gargled with some mouthwash, eliminating any lingering, funky residue from the pot. Finally, he stepped into the shower, sighing in pleasure as the hot water cascaded over him. He didn't lather his skin with soap at first but merely stood there, his back to the spray, one hand braced against the tiles and the other against the glass. "Fuck," he grunted; this was exactly what he needed to chase away his hangover.

His thoughts wandering to the blond brat, Brian chuckled. Justin's delicate skin couldn't handle a perfectly normal temperature for a shower; he ended up looking like a boiled lobster if the temperature wasn't lowered by at least ten degrees, to a barely lukewarm setting. He'd rather have the little twat here though; there were other ways to ‘heat' up a shower, after all.

His mood greatly improved as he finished showering, Brian contemplated what to do with his morning. Justin was going to be baking up a carbohydrate storm with Debbie so, despite the lure of a hot blond and coffee - the stuff Deb brewed at home was always primo - he didn't want to go anywhere near his surrogate mum's house. They'd probably force feed him cookies, demanding his opinion on which ones tasted the best.

His stomach flipped over, providing an unwelcome reminder of yesterday's libations as Brian half-heartedly towelled himself off. It had to still be early, he reasoned. Maybe he'd take a nap and then hit the gym - sweat the rest of the toxins out of his system. The towel slung around his hips, Brian meandered back into the bedroom, only to be confronted by the disarray of his bed. The duvet, top sheet, and a couple pillows were on the floor; the bottom sheet was rucked up, exposing half the mattress; and the pillow he'd slept on was a wadded up, drooled on lump.

Brian couldn't see the bedside clock to check the time; it was covered by the missing pillowslip. "Christ," the hungover stud muttered, striding around the bed and removing the pillowcase. He stared at the blinking, digital readout in shock. No way could it be one fifty-three in the afternoon. The bloody thing must be malfunctioning; he'd double-check the time on his mobile.

His cell phone wasn't on the nightstand where it should be, so Brian padded out to the living room area, where he discovered his phone abandoned on the sofa, the cover flipped up and no display showing. His first thought was that his cell was defective, but then he had a vague recollection of calling a taxi for Cynthia. He must have forgotten to hang up, which meant the phone was dead until it had recharged for at least three hours.

Brian was about to call time on his landline when he thought to look at his Crosby wall clock. The infernal thing confirmed that it was almost two o'clock in the afternoon. Shit. Maybe he should go to the gym now; he'd just have to take it easy at first so he didn't keel over on the treadmill. Afterward, he could sweat out more of the weed and booze in the steam room.

His mind made up, Brian returned to the bedroom. He started to gather up the soiled bedding - he'd dump it in the hamper and put on fresh sheets when he got home - but abruptly halted when he noticed a dark spot on his duvet. Dropping the bottom sheet that he'd just finished removing, Brian picked up the duvet and examined it. There was a tiny black hole in the middle of his expensive quilt. "Fuck!" the stud shouted the expletive. "Goddammit!" 

Something rolled off the duvet and onto the floor, and Brian realised it was the remainder of the joint he'd been smoking in bed. "Fuck," he lamented again, although at a more moderate volume. He had no one but himself to blame for ruining the outrageously pricey Portuguese comforter.

"Fuck," he repeated for a third time, letting the holey duvet slip from his fingers. He kicked the pile of bedding, a few feathers drifting from the damaged pillow and floating around in the air.

There was only one thing that could make this better, the brunet decided. He needed coffee, stat. Brian hurriedly slid on a jockstrap, flung on an old sweatshirt and a pair of sweatpants, and then stuffed his feet into his tacky Timberland boots. He wasn't going to be winning any fashion awards, so he topped everything off with the high school letterman jacket that he'd dug out of the storage room, grabbed his gym bag, set the alarm, and exited the loft.

The crash reverberated through the whole diner, startling everyone. A dyke who was wearing a motorcycle vest over a white eyelet blouse spilled her spoonful of tomato soup down her bodice, while a crotchety old fag sitting by the door looked like he'd just let loose something he should've kept in.

"Shit," Justin cursed under his breath. "Shit," he repeated louder, as he bent down to pick up the scattered pieces of the plate he had just dropped. His trousers stretched across his crotch uncomfortably, and the blond felt like crying. This made the second plate that he had dropped this afternoon because his stupid butterfingers weren't working properly.

"Fuck!" the dyke swore, mopping at her blouse with a paper napkin. "I'd been looking for the right peasant blouse for ages, and now it's ruined."

Crap. He'd have to pay for her to get her shirt dry-cleaned, Justin thought, heaving a dramatic sigh. There went half the tips he'd collected so far today. He dumped the shards of the plate in the tub he'd been using to collect dirty dishes, scraping at the bit of gravy that now decorated the floor with the edge of one sneaker, before approaching the irate lesbian.

Kiki waltzed right past him and over to the woman, her high heels clacking on the linoleum. "Please, honey, you can't tell me you don't know how to get a bit of tomato out of a garment."

The dyke turned pink, a blush staining her face and neck. 

Justin stared. Man, that was a weird thing to see, a butch dyke with a crew cut, multiple piercings, and thick spiral ear gauges blushing like a schoolgirl. The lad clapped a hand over his mouth, suppressing a giggle. 

"Erm, no," the bulldyke stuttered. "I, uh, it's Mia who does the..."

Kiki shook her head, her dark curls bouncing. "Honey, every girl should know how to remove stains. Now, you come on in the kitchen with me, take off your blouse-"

The dyke gaped at her in horror, interrupting with, "But there are men in there!"

Another giggle surged up, which Justin quickly turned into a cough. She reminded him of Brian with the munchers although, really, the brunet would flaunt his body in front of anyone.

Kiki couldn't quite restrain an eye-roll. "I'll shoo them out," she assured the horrified dyke, taking her by the arm and hauling her toward the kitchen. "A little cold water, a little vin-"

"But what am I gonna put on?" the woman wailed, cutting her off mid-word. "I can't wear a wet shirt in the dead of winter!"

"You can borrow one of my blouses." Kiki drew a hand down her white- cuffed blue shirt with a doubled white dickey insert, part of the ensemble she almost always wore in the diner.

Looking even more horrified, the dyke attempted to pull away, but Kiki's grip was too firm, the tranny dragging her toward the kitchen by main force.

They weren't quite out of sight when the diner exploded in laughter. Justin, who'd been faking a cough before, swallowed wrong as he started to giggle and ended up choking on something that was lodged in his throat.

He distantly heard a tattooed man ask, "What kind of a dyke is she?" as he swivelled around on his green stool, addressing the room at large.

"She's giving us all a bad name, that's what," a young mother claimed, jiggling her fretful baby in her arms, voice sour. "She doesn't do the washing; she's afraid to show her tits; she-" The woman abruptly stopped speaking, her nose scrunching up. "What the heck is that smell?"

"Hoo-wee!" Emmett exclaimed at the same moment, flapping a hand in front of his face as he pranced over to Justin. "It's just like being back on the farm in Hazlehurst. Aunt Lula's prize sow, Bessie, had this teensy problem and-"

Fahad elbowed the flamboyant man aside and approached Justin, giving him a thump between the shoulders. "Just spit it out," he advised.

"Baby?" Realising something was wrong, Emmett patted Justin on the back, albeit more gently than the brawny cook.

Another wracking cough and Justin hawked up a small, half-digested glob of something onto the table he'd been clearing. 

Fahad, who'd disappeared for a moment, returned with a bottle of water. "Here, drink some of this."

Shouldn't have nibbled on that saltine, Justin thought, taking one small sip and then another. "Thanks," he rasped out. "Went down the wrong pipe." 

"You don't look so good, Baby," Emmett commented, placing a hand against the teen's forehead. "And um, you're all sweaty." He tried to discreetly wipe off his hand on his pants, but Justin caught the motion.

The light picked up the sheen from Em's lilac sateen trousers and stabbed directly into Justin's eyes. Before he could stop it, another small chunk erupted, splattering his friend. "Fuck, I'm sorry," the mortified lad apologised.

"Erm, it's okay," Emmett responded after a beat, flashing a reassuring smile at him. "This ensemble is so last year, you know?"

He sounded just like Brian, the blond boy thought, summoning up a tepid version of his own smile. He felt horrid, though; he knew Em was just saying that to make him feel better, especially since the flamboyant queen's outfit looked brand new, like he'd probably just cut off the tags. "I could, uh, take it to the dry-cleaner," he half-heartedly offered.

"Don't be ridiculous," Emmett pooh-poohed the offer. "If I decide to give these rags a second chance, I'll just mix together a mild detergent with some water and-"

"You should go give them a hand in the kitchen," an acerbic voice suggested. 

"Pardon?" The southerner looked over at the table where the brunette with the fussy tot was sitting.

Justin frowned. She looked familiar but he couldn't quite place her. What with the throbbing in his groin - which was getting worse again - bouts of nausea, and a pounding headache, he could barely think. He'd hoped snacking on a couple soda crackers would help, but that obviously didn't work. What he really needed, he reasoned, was to go to the break room and-

At that moment, the woman looked over at him, her face lighting up. "Justin," she called out, having no trouble recognising him even if he was still at sea as to who she was.

He attempted another smile, watching as she bounced her baby some more, trying to soothe the upset tyke.

"I forgot Chrissy's teething ring at home," the woman explained, a harried expression crossing her face when the wee one let out a particularly piercing cry.

It now dawned on Justin who the lesbian was; he'd been thrown before because her blonde partner wasn't with her.  

"She usually calms right down if she can suck on that," the brunette continued. "Um, that cold camomile tea really helped, too, the time you brought it to me and Annisa." Her expression turned beseeching. "Do you think you could-"

"I'm on it," the teenager assured her, already moving toward the counter before she finished speaking. This was perfect, he mused, a more natural smile on his lips as he poured hot water over a camomile teabag. He'd leave the tea to steep, nip into the break room to retrieve what he needed from his jacket pocket, and then get a couple ice cubes from the freezer. It should be safe to go into the kitchen; the squawking everyone had heard through the kitchen window seemed to have died down now. 

Moments later, one of the pills retrieved from the baggie in his jacket and stowed deep in the pocket of his apron, Justin entered the kitchen, snagged a bottle of water from the fridge, and promptly dropped it. He stared in horror at the bulldyke, whose bare tits jiggled as she leaned over the sink, tentatively scrubbing at her eyelet blouse.

"Crap on a crutch!" the woman yelped, an equally shocked expression on her face as she stared back at Justin. She dropped her blouse into the half-full sink, where it landed with a wet splat, splashing soapy water onto Kiki's pristine uniform and the floor, and crossed her arms protectively over her chest.

The tranny huffed in exasperation, sticking out a foot to stop the bottle of water that had rolled over to her. "For fuck's sake, Sunshine. Don't tell me you've never seen a woman's tits before." She gave the bottle a gentle kick, sending it back to Justin.

Justin produced a strangled "Gah!" that he suspected sounded an awful lot like one of Gus' favourite words. He turned his back on the two women, opened the freezer, and fumbled for the ice cubes, dropping a couple into a glass. One of the cubes skittered away across the floor, but he figured it couldn't hurt anything - it was just water.

"And you," he heard Kiki address the unfortunate dyke, "the kid's not gonna molest you. He's got no interest in breasts. If you'd just put on my spare shirt that I offered you, there'd be no need for a hissy fit."

Those fat, floppy bits were way gross, Justin thought, shuddering. He bent over and picked up the bottle of water that had now rolled all over the floor - his knees and the rest of his body protesting the manoeuvre. He propped the bottle up to one side of the freezer; he wasn't going to drink from it now - it might have lesbian cooties - but he could use it to water the sad-looking potted plants later on, once the kitchen was again a female-free zone. Levering himself back upright with the aid of the door handle, he snatched a fresh bottle of water from the refrigerator. Eyes averted from the sink, he then awkwardly limp-skedaddled out of the kitchen and back into the main room.

"What was all that squealing about?" Fahad asked as he dispensed fresh coffee to the customers sitting at the counter. 

"Don't ask." Justin shuddered again, wishing he could unsee the goings-on in the kitchen. He sidled past the cook, removed the camomile teabag from the steeped tea, poured out a little of the liquid, and dropped in a couple of the ice cubes. 

"Where the fuck's my meat loaf?" shouted an irate patron from the back of the diner.

Emmett, who'd taken up residence on a stool next to the tattooed bloke, leaned over the counter and hissed, "Who in tarnation orders meat loaf at a diner?"

Fahad boomed out a laugh. "That idiot should be glad his ‘butcher's revenge' has been delayed. He's been driving Kiks nuts with his nitpicking complaints - there's only three napkins in this dispenser; my knife isn't sharp enough; I can't get the ketchup to come out of the bottle-"

"What was he doing?" the tattooed guy interjected. "Squirting catsup into his mouth to test it?"

This was the ideal moment Justin realised, with the three men engaged in discussing the obnoxious customer. His back to everyone, he reached into his apron pocket, snagged the pill with his fingers, and quickly popped it in his mouth before taking a swig from the bottle of water. He should've retrieved two, or even three, of the pills; it wasn't like the ones he'd swallowed this morning did much good. Maybe they were old and had lost some of their potency, he speculated as he pulled a clean washcloth out of a drawer, dampened it, and crushed another of the ice cubes inside it. That would explain why Sven was handing them out so freely - you had to take, like, double or triple the dose for any measurable effect.

"Maybe he was hungry and couldn't wait for his meat loaf?" Emmett posited.

As Justin turned around, the tea and flannel in hand, the guy with the tattooed arms screwed up his nose. "Plain ketchup... yuck."

Justin pictured the red, tomatoey stuff oozing out, and his stomach took a dive. A bit dizzy, he swayed in place, the tea sloshing over the side of the cup and onto his fingers.

"Baby?" Emmett leaned over so far that he ended up belly down across the counter. "You okay?" the southerner asked, clutching Justin's right arm in both hands to help steady him.

"Uh, yeah." Justin trotted out his oft-used explanation. "I just, you know, have a bit of an upset stomach."

Fahad, who'd ventured over to the closest booths with the coffee pot, spun around and eyed him critically. "You're working at a greasy spoon when you have a queasy stomach? Are you nuts?"

A piercing, wordless shriek from the kitchen spared Justin from having to respond.

"That dyke sure is a drama queen," Em drawled, draped arse up across the counter, his legs waving in the air.

A snort followed by "bloody git" sounded from the table where the brunette woman was bouncing her fretful, teething daughter in her arms.

"Christ," Fahad muttered, "I'm gonna have to burn sage and play new age music to get rid of all that negative energy; otherwise, everything I cook's gonna taste like shit. How long does it take to treat a few small stains on a blouse anyroad?" His lips twisting in contempt beneath his moustache, apparently having forgotten about the question he'd asked Justin a minute ago, Fahad moved over to another booth with the pot of coffee.

"Ehm, Emmett?"

"Yeah, Baby?"

"You can let go now." Em was holding his arm with such a firm grip that Justin was certain he'd discover finger-shaped bruises under his T-shirt. 

"Oh, sorry!" the ebullient man apologised, loosening his handhold, although he made no move to get off the counter. "I didn't mean to grab you so hard. You just went all pale suddenly, and I was afraid you might tip over."

"Fuckin' St James cafeteria," Justin muttered.

"Food poisoning?" Emmett guessed. "That can be nasty, Baby. Maybe you should-"

The blond boy cut him off, certain his friend was going to advise that he go home. "Just a touch of poisoning, Em," Justin assured him. ‘Homophobic poisoning' specifically, he thought. "I'll be okay."

The southern man eyed Justin shrewdly but didn't gainsay him, simply remarking, "Let me know if that changes, sweetie. I'll be here for a while, chowing down on my lunch."

The clacking of high heels on lino reached them right before Kiki enquired wryly, "You gonna lap your meal up off the counter, Honeycutt?"

"Why not?" Emmett shrugged and grinned at the tranny, nevertheless beginning to shimmy backwards. "I haven't tried that before."

"Stay there," Mr Tattoo advised, slapping his hand on the counter. "I like the view." 

Justin would have bet the guy really wanted to slap something else. The teen shook his head, smiling wryly as he delivered the tea to the brunette lesbian. Only Emmett could come up with such a unique way to pick up a trick.

"Thanks, Justin." The young mother, who looked to be at her wits' end, glanced at him with gratitude in her eyes, immediately dunking the cold washcloth in the tea before giving it to her baby to suck on.

The tot calmed quickly, happily gnawing at the flannel.

The door to the eatery was pulled open, hard, the bell jangling wildly, and a furious female voice shouted, "You won't see me in this dive again! Ruining my best blouse!" 

The door slammed shut behind what Justin belatedly realised must've been the not-very-bullish dyke; he hadn't even seen her emerge from the kitchen behind Kiki.

"Good riddance!" the tranny yelled after her, looking completely exasperated from dealing with the Nervous Nellie.

"Can I get my meat loaf now?" Mr Catsup bellered from the back of the diner.

"I'm on it," Fahad told Kiki, exchanging an eye roll with her as he headed into the kitchen, adding under his breath, "I'll just give him a serving of my special spice blend..."

Justin giggled as he moved back toward the counter, nearly sprawling on his face when one foot caught on the diaper bag that was next to the brunette woman's chair. He didn't actually fall down, but he had to windmill his arms wildly to catch his balance. Given the laughter and snickers which greeted that manoeuvre, the lad figured he must look like part of a circus act - like he was walking a tightrope or something, even though his feet were flat on the floor.

"Shit. I'm so sorry!" the brunette apologised. "I should have-"

Justin waved her off, mortified by his own clumsiness. What the fuck was wrong with him today?

Fortunately, the spotlight was taken off him, and the laughter died down, when Dr Dave breezed into the diner. "Hey up, Justin, Emmett," he greeted the boys, speaking to Em's backside, then belatedly tacking on, "Kiki," and nodding at the tranny. 

"David," Kiki responded coolly.

Huh, Justin mused. It looked like the mutual dislike between Michael and Kiks had carried over to Dr Dave.

The chiropractor smiled toothily at Justin. "Would you check with the short-order cook to see if my takeaway is ready?"

Wow. Not just Kiks; David apparently didn't get along with Fahad either. Justin wondered if the older man would ever realise he might be making a mistake as to who he aligned himself with. "Sure," was all he said, though, before trotting over to the kitchen pass-through.

"Hey, Fahad," he called out.

"The ketchup guy getting antsy?" Fahad asked, looking up from the range, where he was cooking stuff in a couple of frying pans. He was sprinkling something from a shaker onto what looked like a slice of the meat loaf.

"Probably," Justin acknowledged. "But I'm actually checking on Dr Dave's order."

Fahad looked at him blankly.

"You know, Michael's boyfriend," Justin clarified.

"Oh, the poncy doctor." Fahad nodded in recognition. "He's a snooty git."

The teenager didn't think David was all that bad. He kept Michael out of Brian's hair, some of the time anyway, and he was nice to Debbie, which went a long way toward getting Justin to like him. He could see where the chiropractor would get Fahad's back up, however, since he was kind of pretentious and had at first acted like it was beneath him to eat in a diner.

"Here." Fahad removed a couple of takeout boxes from the warming drawer and handed them to Justin. "I put some of my spice blend in the ‘super deluxe, double cheeseburger.'"

"Um, it's not gonna make him really sick or anything, is it?" Justin asked, feeling an unwilling sympathy for Michael.

"If he didn't have a cast-iron stomach, he might get a touch of heartburn, but that's hardly unusual with fatty foods. Besides," Fahad winked at Justin, "when he phoned in the order, he said I'd better not forget my spice mixture. To quote him" - the chef pitched his voice higher so that it came out as a breathy whine - "‘I don't want to end up with bland food again.'"

"Oh!" Justin giggled, his foggy brain finally clearing enough that he picked up on what the chef meant. "You put in a bit of the broth from your ash-e reshteh soup, huh?"

"Yep," Fahad popped the ‘P', smiling in satisfaction. "The dweeb's hooked - and has no idea that he's eating what he calls ashy rest of curds and whey."

Justin was grinning moments later as he rang up the order for Dr Dave. "Anything else?"

"Nope. Keep the change," the chiropractor instructed as he handed Justin a twenty. "This is exactly what my little poopsie wants."

Speechless, Justin stared after David as he exited the diner.

"Poopsie?" Emmett echoed, horrified. "That's the most disgusting thing I've ever heard."

Considering some of Em's sugary sobriquets, Justin mused, giggling again, it had to be truly nauseating to provoke that reaction.

Meanwhile, on his way to the gym, Brian's teeth were chattering as his old letterman jacket failed to protect him from the brisk winter wind. It also didn't help that in his addle-brained rush out of the loft, he'd forgotten both his gloves and his sunglasses in the pockets of his peacoat. So not only did he feel like he was well on his way to freezing to death, his head was also starting to develop a migraine from the sharp daylight reflecting off the ice and snow right into his pupils.

He had also lost the opportunity to walk into Ript and suavely remove his new Dior sunglasses in front of a group of jealousy-prone fags whose idea of designer eyewear probably ended with Ray Bans. He had bought the sunglasses in place of his old Balenciaga ones, which fell prey to last month's burglary, and he was very satisfied with how they sat on his face and seemed to distinguish his otherwise slightly weak jawline.

As it was, though, all he had to show off as he entered the gym, was the darkness under his eyes. Despite that, George, the co-owner of Ript, greeted him with a hopeful smile and a suggestive hike of his eyebrows from behind the reception desk.

Brian returned the smile with a self-assured one of his own, but to George's disappointment, shook his head no. He wasn't in the mood to fuck today, and truth be told, even if he were, he would still pass on Mr Goodfuck. Let's just say that Mr Goodfuck wasn't as good of a fuck as his name might imply. Actually, he should probably change the man's name to Mr Mediocrefuck or maybe even Lazyfuck. He was a pretty decent fitness trainer, however, so Brian wasn't about to share his thoughts on George's prowess in bed with him.

Brian was grateful to George for another reason. An online hookup and complete stranger at the time, he'd prodded a barefoot Brian to follow the teary-eyed blond teenager down to the street - where the pavement still radiated the heat of the late summer day and seared the soles of his feet - and explain to Justin his fucking philosophy. That hadn't gone over so well, but it did lead Brian to consider things from the boy's perspective later on that night, and he ended up admiring his young stalker's persistence. Things probably would have unfolded the same way without Goodfuck's ‘assistance' - it wasn't like Brian had actually wanted fend off the boy, although he didn't want to seem like an easy to catch either - but Brian couldn't be sure of that, so he was grateful, even if he'd never tell the man that.

Walking through the area with the exercise machines, past the weekly sight of some guy helping a middle-aged gym employee with calculus, he strolled into the locker room and dropped his designer sports bag on the bench in front of his usual locker. He shucked off his letterman jacket, enjoying the appreciative stares it garnered from the two other guys in the room. Good to know that even in hungover state, he still had it.

Peeling off his layers slowly, perhaps a bit too slowly to be regarded as anything but intentional, he didn't stop undressing until he was completely naked. Then, snagging a towel and closing his locker abruptly, he chuckled at the startled faces of his two admirers and made his way into the sauna to warm himself up a little bit before actually exercising.

Brian sauntered over to a bench at the back of the sauna and settled in, closing his eyes in pleasure as the steam billowed around him. He visualised the steam opening his pores and the toxins seeping out, and his lingering headache vanishing. 

When he heard a squelching noise, the stud slitted his eyes open and glanced to his left, where a good-looking brunet was giving himself a handjob, an open package of lube discarded at his feet. Not bad, Brian, thought, estimating the guy's length to be about the same as his own. His height too, for that matter, although that wasn't nearly as important. In fact, Brian realised, the guy was pretty much a clone of him, except for a weird, triangular patch of hair on his chest.

The bloke looked back at him, smirking a little as he gave his manhood another stroke. He quirked an eyebrow at Brian, clearly asking, Want some of this?

Brian snorted, thrusting his own hips forward to convey that he was a pitcher, not a catcher.

The guy shrugged, unbothered, and lowered his hand toward his own hole, fingering the whorled flesh.

Brian considered the invitation for a fleeting moment - it wasn't like he'd have to look at the hairy patch if he took the trick from behind - but then he shook his head. It was the blond brat that he really wanted, which was why he'd made a conscious decision not to bring condoms and lube into the sauna with him. Since he didn't trust any condoms except his own, there was no way he'd give into temptation and jeopardise Operation Twat Retrieval. Not that this guy was much of an enticement anyway.

Brian shook his head, his eyes falling closed again.

He heard a resigned sigh, followed by more squelching, and then a couple of grunts before silence descended on the room. Brian was doubly glad that he'd passed on the invitation from Quick Draw McGraw.

He dozed off and on for a while, before finally getting up and moseying back to his locker, where he slipped into his workout clothes and Nike trainers. Brian flexed his arms, enjoying the way his arm and chest muscles rippled. 

A wistful sigh came from a gangly teenager with carroty fuzz on his cheeks as he avidly eyed Brian from the end of the row of lockers.

No thanks, Brian thought, his eyes skimming over the kid. He already had the only teen he wanted. As he walked out to the main room, his legs like limp noodles and feeling anything but energised, he reflected that it might have been a mistake to use the sauna before exercising. Maybe he'd just go for a light run on the treadmill and then work his lats and biceps on a couple of the exercise machines. 

Glancing around to make sure Honeycutt wasn't in the gym - he refused to compare unfavourably to the unathletic souterner again - Brian climbed onto one of the treadmills. He had his choice since Ript was largely empty this afternoon. Since there was no one around he wanted to impress, there was no need for an incline; this was just a gentle warm-up, after all. The speed set at a crawl of two miles per hour - he'd never utilised such a slow pace before, but even that rate might be taxing for his logy body - he began jogging slowly.

Despite running at a slow pace on a level surface, Brian started sweating freely within a few minutes. He reckoned he must at least be burning off the weed and bourbon, if he went by his strong BO anyhow. It hadn't been that bad in the sauna, had it? he worried. Nah, there was no way that clone would've come onto him then, the brunet stud reassured himself. He really fucking reeked now though, he thought, almost gagging on his own stench. He vaguely recalled the blond brat spouting off with one of his public service announcements on another occasion when he might have had a wee bit too much to drink - something about how he wasn't actually sweating out the alcohol, but rather the by-product of alcohol. Brian didn't consider the distinction important, just the end result.

Forty minutes later, Brian was done in, and he couldn't stand himself any longer. Fuck the weight machines, he decided, powering down the treadmill and clambering awkwardly off the machine. He needed a shower, right fucking now.

As he walked toward the showers, he passed two chattering queens, both of whom stopped and looked around in puzzlement. One of them inhaled deeply and commented, "They really need to fix the ventilation in here. For a moment there, I could swear I smelled skunk."

"More like weasel," his buddy opined. "We had them out in the country-"

Brian hurried to the showers before they could associate the skunky aroma with him. 

Mercifully, he didn't encounter anyone else, either in the locker room or in the showers, so he was spared any further embarrassment. Soon enough, the smell of yesterday's bad decisions was washed away, replaced with the expensive aroma of his Guerlain shampoo and body wash combo.

Afterward, he was forced to don the same sweatshirt and sweatpants he'd worn to Ript since he didn't normally stock his gym bag with a fresh change of clothes - which he now regretted. He sniffed quickly at the sweatshirt before pulling it over his head, relieved that it smelled okay, probably because he hadn't really perspired between getting out of the shower at the loft and arriving at the gym. Just to be on the safe side, he'd change clothes when he got home and shower again before heading to Babylon. A touch of masculine sweat acquired on the dance floor would entice the blond boy to spend the night with him, but the stuff Brian had been secreting? Phew! He'd be lucky to convince the kid to come near him ever again. 

As Brian made his way past the reception desk, intent on getting home and resting up so he could fuck out his young lover's brains tonight, a voice called out, "Hey, Kinney?"

Brian spun around, his brow furrowing in irritation as he looked at George. Didn't the man know how to take no for an answer? "Yeah?"

"Nice boots." Mr ‘Not Worth a Repeat' gestured at his Timberlands.

His expression was so bland that Brian couldn't decide whether George meant that as a compliment or not.

A tittering from the two queens Brian had walked past just a short time ago, and who were now prancing along on neighbouring treadmills, à la Honeycutt, left no doubt as to their opinion, however.

"That's the Stud of Liberty Avenue?" the queen who was wearing a diametrically striped, lime green and orange tank hissed at his friend.

The other queen nodded sadly, surprisingly defined pecs outlined under his skintight, hot pink tee. "He used to be the hottest, best-dressed, fag around. But now..." His gaze travelled over Brian's ensemble, and he sniffed dismissively.

Like he gave a fuck about their opinion, Brian thought, scowling. Talk about fashion disasters. He turned his scowl on George, who was now falling about behind the counter, laughing uproariously, and walked out of Ript in a huff. 

He had better things to do than listen to a bunch of laughing hyenas... like come up with a couple of interesting scenarios for tonight. As he was internally debating how and where to take his favourite twink first - from behind, over the back of the sofa, the blond's hair skimming the cushions; the boy on his back on Brian's Natuzzi area rug, which looked a lot smarter than the burgled Genova one, while Brian plowed into him; spreadeagled across the bed, his hands secured with-

"Watch it, mister!" a voice from somewhere near his feet called out.

Startled, Brian executed an ungraceful, hopping motion to avoid tripping over the outthrust legs of a homeless man who was huddled against the wall of the gym. "Sorry," he grunted, fishing a tenner out of his pocket and dropping it in the cup next to the man's hip.

"Right kind of you." The man grinned up at him, boozy breath and a sour smell washing over Brian.

Half an hour ago, he could've given the wino some competition for the worst BO, the stud mused wryly. The need for yet another shower suddenly seeming more urgent, Brian hastened toward his jeep. He'd take that shower, pick out his most stunning clubbing attire, and dream up some more steamy sex. If Brian had his way, he and Justin wouldn't be doing much sleeping tonight, so there'd be plenty of time to play out four or five of the scenes.

Later that evening, Justin was rushing to get ready for his gig at Babylon. Kiki had been kind enough to let him take his second break at the end of his diner shift, but even when he was up to par, that barely allowed him enough time to get home, change, and make it to Babylon by eight o'clock.

The lad had briefly contemplated going straight to the club from the diner - he was gonna be stripping down to his briefs anyway - but he was desperate to apply some more of the first aid cream, which he'd stupidly left behind in his room. If it wasn't for that, he could've avoided Debbie, who was currently hectoring him through the closed bedroom door.

"Don't you dare hide that banana in the dresser!" she yelled, right as Justin opened one of the bureau drawers to hide the yellow fruit that his mum had pressed on him as soon as he came through the front door, insisting that he eat at least half of it, so he'd have something in his stomach before dancing.

Fuck, did her superpowers extend to seeing through wood? Justin wondered a trifle hysterically. It took him a second to realise this was probably one of Michael's favourite hiding places, so it was natural for Deb to suspect he'd stash things there too.

"Michael will have kittens if you forget it in there and it ruins one of his T-shirts!" Debbie elaborated.

Yeah, he'd rather not deal with a Michael tantrum, Justin thought. Resigned to eating part of the pulpy fruit, he peeled back the skin and nibbled at the end. He then set the half-unpeeled banana on the nightstand, and looked down at his cargo pants, fumbling to unbutton and unzip the fly, anxious to rub the soothing ointment over his injuries, particularly his balls, which had for some reason been hypersensitive all afternoon.

His cargo pants had grease stains on them, the lad realised, scrunching up his nose in disgust as he pushed them down. The stains must have come from the plate of French fries he'd spilled down his front in a particularly klutzy moment, so they needed changing anyway. Fortunately, the legs were wide enough at the bottom that he could just step out of the cargos without removing his trainers. The material rasped unpleasantly against his skin as the trousers skimmed down his legs, and Justin kicked them away in irritation

The cargo pants gone, Justin hooked his fingers under the waistband of his tighty-whities and started to lower them. "Ow!" he complained loudly when the soft cotton fabric scraped against his junk.

"Sunshine?" Debbie's knuckles rapped against the wooden door. "Want me to-"

"I'm okay!" Justin yelped. Fuck, all he needed to make this fucked-up day even worse was for his mum to barge in.

He peered down at his briefs, carefully pulling them away from his skin. His old, nearly worn-out tighty-whities were baggy and comfortable, which was why he'd put them on this morning. As he went to push them down over his crotch, two of his fingers suddenly poked through a hole.

Justin stared stupidly at his fingers for a moment before stretching the fabric further away from his body, muttering, "Duh," when he discovered that the hole was almost as large as his right nut. The torn material must've been catching on his tender, bruised skin and exacerbating the injury.

The boy groaned. There was nothing for it; he was gonna have to change his underwear too. Not only would having his ball rub against the torn fabric while he danced be painful, there was also the likelihood that the hole would grow in size, and his ball would pop right out into full view of the onlookers. Maybe even into the hand of one of the horny fags who was slipping a bill under the band of his briefs, Justin thought, shuddering.

He quickly shucked off the holey white briefs and kicked them over to the corner, where they landed on top of his dirty cargo pants. He should probably just throw them out, but maybe they could be darned, Justin thought hopefully. Then he wouldn't have to splash out for yet more underwear; his budget was strained enough as it was.

Opening the drawer where his meagre pieces of clothing were stashed, Justin groaned again. He fished around, reaching into the far corners, despite it being obvious that the only underwear in the drawer was two pairs of his skimpy cobalt briefs. Fuck. All of his other underpants must be in the laundry.

Heaving out a sigh, Justin removed one pair of the sexy briefs and tossed them on the bed. As he smoothed the first aid cream over his aching genitals, he consoled himself that it was probably better to wear his new briefs. Emmett would be at the club tonight, and he'd be dying of curiosity, wanting to know why Justin was wearing tighty-whities instead of the sexy blue briefs. He'd doubtless pepper Justin with comments like - ‘Why are you wearing those unsexy, saggy, Y-fronts, Baby?' or ‘Honey, you're supposed to show off your tush, not cover it up with a dishrag.' or ‘You're not gonna pull any sexy guys with those old things.'

Better to spare himself the well-meaning lecture, the blond decided, wincing as he spread the unguent over his junk, the calluses on the tips of his fingers rasping like sandpaper against the sore skin. Shouldn't the injury to his testicles be starting to heal? he wondered muzzily as he moved on to his knees, liberally applying the lotion there as well. If anything, it seemed like the pain had increased.

Justin was still mulling it over as he stretched the leg holes of his briefs as wide as he could, slipping his sneaker-shod feet through one opening and then the other. He whimpered as he slid the underwear up over his bruised kneecaps, cupping his genitals protectively in one hand as he tugged the stretchy material up over his hips.

A whine escaped him and tears sprang to his eyes when he removed his hand, the elastic band snapping into place and the shiny material tightly clinging to his balls. Just one more night, Justin reminded himself, stepping into another pair of cargo pants and donning a clean T-shirt. Then he'd have a break from dancing until next weekend. Heck, he'd even forgo his shifts at the diner for a couple days and let Debbie baby him. If he conceded that she was right about the dancing upsetting his stomach more, his mum would just be happy he was taking care of himself, right?

Satisfied with his plan, such as it was, he opened his bedroom door to a glowering Debbie, who was planted right outside the doorway, frowning as she looked him up and down. 

"You're determined to go to Babylon then?" she barked at him, hands curled into fists on her hips.

Justin nodded, biting his lip, afraid that if he opened his mouth to speak, he'd start bawling. I'm not a silly little faggot, he mentally chided himself. He didn't need his mama to hug him and tell him that everything would be okay. Yes, you do, he heard from a distant corner of his brain.

He swallowed hard, tempted to give in to that faint warning, but then his mum stepped back, shaking her head disapprovingly as she motioned toward the stairs. "Get on with you. I think you're being completely foolish, but I won't stop you since I promised you could go if you made it through your shift at the diner."

Debbie hadn't even called him ‘Sunshine,' Justin thought, his lower lip wobbling as he hurried past her. His mum must really be upset with him. He'd make it up to her tomorrow, he vowed to himself; she could coddle him all she wanted then.

It was a few minutes past eight when Justin got to the club. He'd stumbled his way here, half-blinded by tears of pain and self-pity. The expressions of resigned disapproval from both his mum and Vic had almost made him change his mind, but in the end, he'd shut the front door behind him and staggered off toward Babylon.

Swiping at his eyes with the sleeve of his coat, Justin hurried past Oscar, who was busy checking IDs. He was surprised that there was a line of fags waiting to get into Babylon at such an early hour, but then he realised they must be making up for not being able to get out during yesterday's severe weather and power outage.

He dashed through the main room of Babylon, anxious about being late, relaxing just a little when he saw that only one of the other go-go boys was already at his station, a circular platform well above the floor at the back of the club, dancing in a desultory fashion. That was a horrible place to be stuck, he thought, shooting a sympathetic glance at the other boy. Away from the bars, the go-go dancers didn't get many tips, mainly because it was an effort for the fags at the club to actually reach them to slip money into their underwear.

Misjudging the space as he manoeuvred around another go-go boy on his way into the changing area, he rammed his left knee into the doorjamb. "Fuck," he choked out, tears welling up in his eyes at the unexpected pain stabbing into his already sore kneecap. Justin limped over to his locker, trying to figure out how he'd run into the doorframe.

"Christ. That must've hurt," came a sympathetic voice from behind him.

One hand braced against his locker, Justin swivelled around and came face-to-face with Sven. He just nodded, afraid his voice would waver if he tried to speak.

Sven leaned against the locker next to Justin, a Ziploc filled with a white powder dangling from his fingers. 

Justin's eyes locked onto the baggie.

"I've got something that would help," Sven crooned.

Justin licked his suddenly dry lips. He hadn't been going to take the mysterious white powder ever again, he remembered, even as the fingers of his right hand twitched, itching to claim the contents of the baggie for himself.

But what could it hurt? his internal debate continued. It wasn't like he was going to make a habit of snorting drugs or popping pills. This would be the last time - just to get him over the hurdle with this fucking testicular injury. By next weekend, he'd be fine and wouldn't need to drug himself again.

"Here. It's all yours," Sven said, pushing the bag with the powder into his hand. 

Justin's fingers closed reflexively around it.

"I've gotta get out to the bar. If you don't want it, just give it back to me at the end of the night."

Justin watched as Sven - besides him, the only ‘true blond' among the go-go boys - disappeared into the main room. He dithered for a moment, his mind clamouring a warning as he stared at the baggie. But then he heard a Madonna song stream through the speakers, the music thrumming through his body. Taking it as a sign that he ought to ‘go with the flow,' he quickly removed the straw from the baggie and tore off the wrapper. Just a little bit, he cautioned himself, squeezing only a smidgen of the powder into one corner of the Ziploc before inhaling it through the straw. He then flung off his clothes, leaving them in a crumpled heap at the bottom of his locker, and rushed out to the main room, his hips swaying to the music.

Brian reached the club shortly after Madonna's Vogue started playing. He was ridiculously early - it was barely eight o'clock, and normally only the losers arrived at this hour - but he was itching to see the blond brat, and this should make up for not showing up last night. He wasn't the only one making up for a missed night, he thought, his eyes scanning the growing line of fags as he strolled past them into Babylon. He took off his peacoat, having learned his lesson with the letterman jacket, and gave it to the coat check attendant. Then, smoothing the dark green silk shirt down his torso, he walked through to the main dance floor. 

Eyes scanning the crowd, Brian sidestepped a group of teenagers who looked barely old enough to drive and headed towards the main bar. Ignoring all the writhing bodies on the dance floor and the occasional off-key yell of ‘Let your body move to the music!', he didn't waste any time reaching his group of friends.

Unsurprisingly, the boys were all there already. Michael, leaning his back against the bar as he nursed a can of Coors, was wiggling his arse to and fro to the cheesy rhythm, while Emmett and Ted stood a couple feet to his right, eyeing the crowd of dancing fags appreciatively. Most importantly, though, a couple feet from Brian, Justin stood on a small platform at the end of the bar, his body swaying sensually to the beat.

Ted nodded at him politely, being the first to notice him come up, and Brian returned the nod. The brunet stud then winked at Justin when he thought the teen was looking his way, but going by the blank look on the blond's face, he hadn't actually seen him. Whatever - he'd notice him soon enough - Brian wasn't worried. Not with the way his leather pants showed off his tight butt and long legs.

"Hi, Brian!" Emmett shouted over the music, grinning at him after taking a sip of a frothy pink drink. "I almost didn't notice you!"

Brian rolled his eyes. "I'm not surprised, what with the way your eyes were glued to that guy's ass," he teased the other man, pointing at a tall, black man dancing a few feet away from them, his big and juicy butt jiggling.

Emmett sighed dreamily. "Yeah, too bad he's the biggest bottom to ever bottom. I saw him getting DP'd in the backroom once, and the look of bliss on his face was pretty telling."

The brunet stud snorted. "One look at that ass and I could've told you that. It's even bigger than Justin's."

Emmett arched an amused eyebrow at him but forbore from commenting, thankfully.

Michael, who hadn't seemed to be listening to their conversation or even really aware of Brian's presence, suddenly looked up. "Brian! I'm so happy you're here. You want to come dance with me?"

Glancing at Justin, who was now twitchily moving his ass to Gloria Gaynor's I Will Survive, Brian nodded. What the hell; why not? It wasn't like the brat was paying him any attention.

He followed Michael into the throng of thrusting bodies before grabbing his friend around the shoulders and beginning to move. It was always a bit awkward with Michael until they found their rhythm, but when they did, it was like coming home. His best friend was so familiar, so predictable, that Brian didn't have to think much about anything and just enjoyed the presence of someone who knew and accepted him. 

Thrusting his crotch against Michael's, the adman smiled at his best friend cheekily. "Where's your other half?" he asked.

Michael shrugged, giggling like a little boy when Brian knocked their foreheads together. "David had to stay home; he's editing some sort of article or something."  

"Boring," he commented.

"What's boring?" a cheerful voice asked as Emmett joined the duo on the dance floor.

"Your choice of outfit," Brian immediately snarked, eyeing the southerner's black mesh top and wine red trousers. "Where's the pink, Honeycutt? Or the neon green?"

"Don't call me Honeycutt," the flamboyant man reprimanded him without any heat in his voice. "And I don't always wear glaring colours; this ensemble may be a little understated but it makes me look hot."

"That it does," growled someone from behind Brian.

Emmett smiled flirtatiously. "Well, hello. And who might you be?"

Brian turned around to check out the new arrival, immediately recognising the dark-haired man as someone he'd already had. Now if he could only remember what the sex was like, so he could give Emmett his recommendation.

"Dennis," the man replied to Em's question. "HIV negative, eight inches, uncut."

Emmett, either underwhelmed by the trick's credentials or having noticed Brian's look of recognition, turned to him with raised eyebrows.

The adman shook his head almost imperceptibly. Small wonder he'd had trouble remembering the trick. He'd been nothing special; in fact, he was one of the most boring fucks Brian had ever had and a total nelly bottom to boot.

Emmett smiled at the trick regretfully. "Sorry, I'm not interested after all."

The man huffed, glaring at Brian, but left without any complaints.

"Good riddance," the brunet stud muttered, shrugging a shoulder at Emmett. "Guy was a total bottom and not even a very good one," he explained to his friend. "The only good thing he did for me was that when I passed out afterwards, he let himself out of the loft and didn't bother me."

Michael grinned. "That's so typically you, Brian. Fuck 'em and leave 'em."

Just then, the song changed again, In the Navy blaring out of the speakers. Brian frowned. "I'm not dancing to that shit; I'm gonna get a drink. You boys have fun without me," he told his friends, before leaving in the direction of some good whiskey, and Justin.

Joining Ted, who hadn't moved an inch from where he'd been propping up the bar, he ordered a tumbler of his usual poison with a simple gesture of his hand. As he waited for the barman to pour, he couldn't help but watch Justin dance. The blond was beautiful as usual, his pale torso glittering with sweat underneath the pink and purple strobe lights as he shook his hips to the familiar rhythm.

Well, kind of, Brian realised. The teen actually seemed to be a bit offbeat this time. His movements were jerky, his hands uncoordinated, and his eyes looked glazed. Something was wrong.

"Is Justin alright?" asked Ted, leaning into Brian to speak near his ear. 

Apparently, he wasn't the only one concerned. Brian pressed his lips together tightly. "That's a good question, Theodore," he grunted, absentmindedly accepting a glass from the bartender. "He looks..." he trailed off, not sure how to finish the sentence.

Ted had no trouble finishing it for him, though. "High," the accountant said. "He looks high."

Brian felt his stomach swoop. "Yeah."

"Really high," Ted amended.

The adman shot his friend an irritated look. "Yeah, I can see that, thanks," he snapped curtly before turning his eyes back to Justin. 

The kid was looking more and more loopy with every second, which might explain why Brian hadn't noticed anything amiss when he first entered the club - the drugs might not have taken effect yet.

"Should we go and help him?" Ted whispered as they watched Justin uselessly bat at a hand trying to cop a feel under the guise of shoving a fiver into the teen's briefs. The accountant's voice sounded extremely worried which, now that Brian thought about it, made perfect sense. If anyone knew about the dangers of drugs, it was Theodore.

Brian was already gritting his teeth at having to watch someone fondle his kid in front of him, but he knew that went with the ‘job.' Biting back his instinctive response of ‘Not my problem,' he forced himself to genuinely consider the situation. On one hand, Justin didn't actually seem to be on the verge of dying. However, on the other hand, he didn't look to be in full control of himself. Or any control at all, Brian corrected himself as he saw Justin stumble.

"Hey, Kinney." Freddie leaned across the bar, speaking in a low voice.

Brian blinked at the barman in surprise. What was it today with former tricks angling for a repeat? "Yeah?"

"You're friends with the blond kid, right?" When Brian simply stared at him, he clarified, "Justin," inclining his head toward the end of the bar where the teenager, catching the toe of one sneaker on the surface of the platform, stumbled again.

Like he hadn't known who Freddie meant, the brunet stud thought, rolling his eyes in exasperation. "So?"

"I think he's in over his head," the barkeep replied in a hushed voice. "Rico said he was well out of it last night too."

Ted joined the conversation, frowning. "I've heard that drugs get pushed at the go-go boys so they'll keep dancing. Is that true?"

Freddie held up one hand, palm down over the surface of the bar, and rolled it from side to side. "Maybe. I don't think anyone's forced to take anything, though. And it's nearly impossible to pin down who's responsible."

Brian was still reluctant to intervene. Sometimes, the only way to learn a lesson was through experience. The brat was gonna be sicker than a dog after two nights of doping himself up; he was deluding himself if he thought whatever he'd downed wasn't going to have any negative effects. Plus, if after promising him that he'd never do drugs, Justin was popping pills just so he could earn money dancing, Brian was gonna ream him a new one. 

As he watched Justin move counter to the beat instead of with it - a sure sign that something was wrong - another patron approached the blond, waving a banknote in one hand, his other hand slithering under Justin's skimpy, sexy-as-fuck briefs to fondle the goods. Justin backpedalled, pain flashing across his face, as he tried to evade the handsy fag.

"What the fuck?" Brian growled, setting down his drink. Copping a feel was bad enough, but squeezing so hard you hurt one of the dancers should've had someone stepping in and throwing the wanker out of the club.

The importunate fag didn't let go, his fingers sliding over Justin's package. The blond's mouth opened and a high-pitched note of distress came out of it.

A few long strides and Brian was next to the platform, Ted flanking him. He grabbed the horny customer's wrist in a punishing grip, squeezing hard. "Let go," he rasped into the man's ear, his voice low and deadly.

The short man with the receding hairline looked at Brian in terror. "Sure," he squeaked. "But uh, you gotta let go first."

Releasing his grip on the man's wrist, Brian watched as the man removed his hand from under Justin's briefs.

The blond boy doubled over, his expression of pain not easing.

The short guy must've really given Justin's balls a good twist, Brian thought, scowling murderously at him. "Get lost!" he yelled.

Shaking out his hand, the terrified fag backed away from Brian, quickly vanishing into the throng on the dance floor.

Brian stepped up onto the platform. "You're done for tonight, Sunshine," he told the boy.

Justin stared at him dazedly, his blue eyes glassy from drugs and pain. He didn't put up any resistance, but he didn't help either, swaying from side to side as he gazed blankly at Brian.

Brian guided him towards Ted, who helped Justin down the couple of steps from the platform to the top of the bar. The younger brunet then hauled him bodily off the bar.

Freddie nodded at Brian and Ted and then, clapping his hands to draw attention away from them, he shouted, "Yahoo! Look at that boy shake his booty!" and flung out a hand, pointing at one of the dancers on the far side of the bar.

The horny fags around the bar immediately gravitated to the other go-go dancer, who grinned broadly as more banknotes were slipped into his briefs.

Placing Justin's arms over their shoulders, Brian and Theodore supported the blond between them, the teenager largely a dead weight. Justin whimpered a little but otherwise didn't protest against being carried to the dressing room. In fact, Brian mused, worried, the kid was almost comatose.

"Christ," Ted puffed, "Justin's got more meat on his bones than I expected. I wish Ben were here. He'd just sling the kid over his shoulder in a fireman's carry."

"Where is the professor anyway?" Brian asked, also breathing a little hard, the words not coming out as smoothly as he would have liked. "I thought you two were joined at the hip."

"He's... working... on a... special lecture... on... homo... eroticism... in literature... through the... centuries," Theodore slowly eked out. "It's like... some huge... deal."

"I take my homoeroticism up close and personal," Brian quipped. "Sunshine?" He deliberately jostled the blond, trying to wake him up a little. "Which locker is yours?"

One of the dancers who must have been on a break briefly looked up from the table where he was sitting, a jacket draped over his bare shoulders, his lack of interest in what they were doing with Justin evident. He did point at one of the lockers though, the door to which was hanging open. 

Ted, who was closer to the locker, reached out and pulled the door open all the way. "Brian," he muttered, turning his face toward the younger man, shock written all over his face.

Brian followed Ted's gaze to the Ziploc bag sticking out from beneath Justin's clothes, a white powder visible through the plastic. Christ, had the kid done coke? Meth? Some kind of bastardised combination of the two?

Pressing his lips together tightly - he wanted to shake the stupid little twat until his bones rattled - Brian shifted Justin around so that he was half leaning against the locker and was half supported by Ted, before bending down and scooping up the packet, shoving it into the pocket of his jeans. He wasn't sure what he'd do with the powder, but there was no way he was leaving it here in Justin's locker, where anyone could find it.

It took a few tries for Ted to get Justin's feet into the legs of his cargo pants. The kid wasn't any help at all, leaning heavily against Brian, who was braced against his locker. Ted lifted Justin's right foot and then his left, endeavouring to insert them into his pant legs, but his efforts were hampered by his trainers catching on the bunched material and the blond twitching and almost kicking Theodore in the nose at one point.

Ted finally got to where he could slide Justin's trousers up his legs. "Uh, Bri?"

"What?" Brian asked crankily. Christ, Theodore was right; the kid did weigh a ton. He'd rather think about that, with Justin warm in his arms, even if he was clammy with sweat, than worry about whether he might have overdosed. Brian was fairly sure it wasn't that serious - he'd seen more than one strung-out dopehead - but he couldn't help worrying anyway.

"Justin's knees are really swollen and bruised. They look pretty bad."

Brian looked down the length of Justin's body. He didn't have a good angle, but even so, he could see the discolouration and swelling. What the fuck? Did the kid fall off the bar last night or something?

"If he hasn't come to by the time I get him to the loft, I'll wipe off his knees and put some Bacitracin on them," he assured the older man. "For now, just get those fucking cargo pants fastened."

"Weighs a bit, huh?" Theodore guessed, chuckling.

"Fuck off," Brian grunted.

The trousers finally secured around Justin's waist, the bills tucked into the boy's underwear rustling as they were crushed, the two men didn't have much trouble slipping Justin's sweatshirt over his head and inserting his arms into the sleeves. His jacket went on next, Brian cringing at how threadbare it was. The damned thing wouldn't keep a space heater warm. If the kid was too stubborn to shell out the money for something better, Brian guessed he would have to take care of it for him. 

Justin's arms again looped over their shoulders and their arms around his waist, they exited the dressing area, skirting the dancing horde.

"We should let Em and Michael know we're leaving," Ted panted as they neared the door to the club.

"What the fuck for? They're big boys," Brian retorted. "They can see themselves home." 

"Yeah, okay," Ted conceded. "Besides, Em is probably on his second backroom trick by now. He's the only one who can keep up with you, Bri."

As if, Brian thought. He normally would've had a snarky comeback for the gobby accountant, but all his attention was on the blond boy hanging limply between them as they half dragged him past the coat check.

"Uh, Bri?"

What the fuck now? Brian wondered, acknowledging the question with a wordless grunt.

"Our coats?"

Brian came to a stop, embarrassed that he'd almost forgotten his peacoat. And Ted actually had a decent wool coat now; he wouldn't want his friend to revert to that dime-store rag he used to wear. How the fuck were they supposed to get the damned things on? he then wondered as he accepted the coats from the guy behind the counter.

"Here," he handed both coats to Ted and braced himself against the wall by the cloakroom, holding Justin in his arms. "Put yours on and then you can hold onto Justin while I get into mine."

It didn't go too badly, although Theodore nearly toppled over when Brian transferred the blond's weight to him. Served his impertinent friend right, Brian thought, smiling a little as they then covered the short distance to the main entrance.

To get through the door, they had to turn sideways, Theodore leading the way. The older man had one foot over the doorsill when two newcomers tried to push their way past them into the club.

"Fuck off," Ted snarled, in a reasonable approximation of Brian at his pissed-off best. The adman was almost impressed.

"You fuck off!" one of the duo of new arrivals shouted, pushing against Ted's shoulder.

Oscar looked up from where he was checking IDs. "Back off," he ordered, clasping the belligerent man by the shoulder and jerking him away from the door. "You want in the club, then you'd better behave yourself."

A pugnacious expression on his face, the guy stood there for a moment before backing off to stand next to his friend.

"You okay Ted?" Oscar asked, motioning him forward.

Brian was surprised the bouncer knew Theodore's name. Maybe it was because the older man had stood in line so many times when Brian wasn't around to escort him into the club, with no need to wait.

"Yeah, thanks. Our young friend, though, not so much," Ted replied, breathing hard as they guided Justin out of the club.

"Shit," Oscar blurted when he saw Justin. "What happened? Did those two guys do something to him? I don't know how they could've sneaked by me, though."

"What two guys?" Brian snapped out.

"Can we go in now?" the pushy bloke interjected.

"Yeah. Go on." Oscar waved the two men inside before shutting the door and fastening a red rope between the stanchions on either side of the entrance.

"What the fuck, man?" came a protest from the queue of fags waiting to get into Babylon.

"I'll be right back," Oscar assured them, taking Justin from Ted and Brian, easily lifting him up in his arms. "Where to?" he asked.

"My car?" Ted looked at Brian. "I'm parked just over there."

"Of course you are," Brian muttered. Fucking stolen parking karma.

As he settled the teenager in the passenger seat of Ted's Mercedes, Oscar explained, "These two guys who'd been pestering Justin yesterday tried to snatch him at the end of the night, so they could take him home and ‘play' with him."

"Creepy," Justin mumbled indistinctly from where he was slumped in the car. "Don' wanna play."

Fuck. He should've been here last night, Brian thought. No one would have dared to assault Justin if he'd been with him.

Theodore patted him on the back. "Don't go there, Bri," he advised, speaking quietly. "Don't do that to yourself."

Brian bit his lip, not meeting his friend's eyes. 

"Hey. You concentrate on Justin, now," Ted urged. "He seems to be reviving - that's a good sign."

"Use your brains, Kinney," Oscar recommended, "and listen to Ted. You've got something special in that boy."

Brian looked at the blond, who opened his eyes for a second, his lips twitching in what might've been a smile.

"I've gotta get back to the club," the bouncer continued, "or all those horny fags are gonna break down the door. I'll see you guys soon, okay?"

Brian nodded, his gaze focused on Justin.

"Thanks, Oscar," Ted acknowledged his help as the doorman trotted back to Babylon. He then turned to Brian. "You want to ride with us, or would you rather get your jeep?"

No way was Brian gonna let the kid out of his sight. "Ride with you," he answered, sliding into the back seat. He looked at the clock on the dash as Ted smoothly pulled away from the curb, absentmindedly noting that it was still earlier than the time he'd normally arrive at the club. It should be at least midnight, given how wrung out he was emotionally.

Twenty minutes later, they had Justin ensconced on the sofa in the loft, with Brian flopped down next to him. Since the kid was gradually becoming more aware, it hadn't been as difficult as Brian feared to get him out of Ted's car and up to the loft. He still wouldn't have wanted to try it without Theodore's help, though; the brat probably would've tumbled down the stairs when Brian had to let go of him for a second to unlock the door.

"Here, Bri." Ted handed him a couple of bottles of water before sitting down in the armchair across from them, twisting the cap off another bottle and taking a gulp.

Depositing one of the bottles on the coffee table, Brian opened the other one, took a swig, and then pressed it into Justin's hands, which rested loosely in his lap. "Drink up, Sunshine," he commanded. "You've gotta flush out that garbage you snorted."

Justin blinked at him in owlish confusion.

"Like this," Ted commented drily.

Justin's unfocused gaze shifted to Ted, and he watched as the older man raised his bottle to his lips and swallowed some of the water.

"Now you," Ted instructed.

Justin slowly lifted the bottle to his lips, the plastic almost slipping out of his lax grip.

Brian, who'd anticipated the kid would be uncoordinated, held a hand under the bottle like you would for a toddler.

Justin took a couple of small mouthfuls of the water, stopped for a moment, and then started guzzling from the bottle, soon emptying it.

Brian took the empty bottle from him, opened another one, and handed it to the boy, who began gulping it down.

"Good," Ted proclaimed. "Keep drinking - your body needs the fluid - but slow down a bit, okay?" To Brian, he added more quietly, "It might make him sick, drinking that fast, which isn't gonna do any good, what with that powdery stuff going directly to his bloodstream."

That knowledge was probably hard-won, Brian reckoned, happy to listen to the older man's advice. And since he didn't want to vomit all over his new couch... "Grab the plastic tub from under-" he began.

Unfortunately for his sofa - and his favourite clubbing outfit - he was too late. Justin's diaphragm contracted and bile came spewing out, along with small pieces of something whitish.

"Fuck," Brian sighed. He ought to threaten the brat with having to pay to get everything dry-cleaned, but he didn't want Justin to get even more obsessed with earning money.

"S'rry," the blond slurred, turning woebegone blue eyes on Brian.

"Fuck," Brian sighed again.

"Here." Ted nudged Brian's leg with his own.

Brian glanced up, surprised to find his friend standing next to him, a damp washcloth in his outstretched hand.

"Thanks," Brian grunted, before gripping the boy's chin with his fingers, turning his face toward him, and wiping it off. Done, he tossed the flannel into the plastic tub that Ted must've found under the sink.

Theodore handed him another bottle of water.

Brian passed it over to Justin, curious as to whether the kid now had enough control of his fingers to open it himself. 

As he watched the teen fumble with the bottle, he looked down at his stained clothes, inhaled, and muttered, "Christ, I stink almost as bad as I did this morning."

"Eau de pot?" Ted surmised.

"Substitute bourbon for the ‘eau' and you'd be right," Brian commented sourly.

"I didn't exactly smell fresh as a daisy this morning either," the older brunet admitted. "And I'm pretty sure I've got you beat for the most embarrassing moment of the day."

"Yeah?" Curiosity piqued, Brian looked up at his friend. "Somehow I doubt that."

"Um, I may've fallen asleep last night."

When nothing more was forthcoming, Brian snarked, "That's normally when a person sleeps, Theodore."

"Yeah, but they don't fall asleep when-" Ted stopped again, his face pinkening with embarrassment.

"When?" Brian prompted. He really was curious now. Had the man fallen asleep on the toilet or something?

"Inthemiddleofsex," Theodore blurted out, making his admission into one long word.

It took Brian a moment to comprehend what Ted had said, but when he figured it out, he started laughing uproariously and slapping at his thigh in amusement. "Only you, Theodore," he gasped.

"What zackly were you doin'?" a voice piped up from his other side.

Both men looked at Justin, who was staring back at them inquisitively, his eyes significantly clearer. He'd managed to get the cap off the bottle and was now sipping from it. His hands were trembling a little, but he was much more alert than before.

"Uh, that's not important," Ted stuttered, flustered, his face now the same shade of fuchsia as Emmett's favourite man purse.

He'd worm it out of Theodore sooner or later, Brian figured, so he'd let it go for now. 

"What's important," Ted continued earnestly, "is why you took drugs - and where you got them from. You were so high that you passed out on the dance platform at Babylon."

Justin's eyes slid away from them. "It was just a couple pills," he mumbled.

His jaw dropping, Brian stared at the kid in shock. "You mean you took something else on top of this shit?" he barked, pulling out the Ziploc bag from his jeans.

Justin paled, although how that was possible when his skin was already porcelain white, Brian wasn't sure.

His brow furrowing in concern, Ted asked, "Do you know what the pills were, or the powder?"

"Uh, not really," Justin admitted. "I think the pills were old, though. I mean, they didn't really do much."

"It was bloody stupid to take one drug on top of another when you didn't know what the hell you were taking!" Brian yelled, making the boy jump.

Ted placed a hand on Brian's shoulder, wanting him to calm down, he assumed. Yelling at the kid might not be a good way to get information out of him, but damn, he was royally pissed off. Hadn't Justin listened when he talked about never taking drugs from strangers?

"Who'd you get the drugs from?" Ted enquired in an even tone.

"Uh-"

"Maybe one of the other go-go boys?" Theodore prompted when Justin didn't say anything else.

The blond nodded slightly.

"When did you take the pills?" Ted wanted to know. "And the powder?"

"Erm, one pill right before the end of my shift at the diner, and-"

Ted remarked, his voice rising, "You said a couple pills. When and how many did you take?"

Looking like he was about to start crying, Justin confessed, "Today - two this morning and then two at the diner in the afternoon. I didn't take the ones at the diner at the same time, though."

"So today wasn't the first time?" Brian expostulated. He already knew from Freddie that Justin must've been high yesterday, but he was worried that he'd missed earlier signs that the boy was using. "When did this fucking start, Justin?" he demanded more information, waving the baggie in front of the ashen blond's face. "And don't think I've forgotten about this fucking powder, because I bloody well haven't."

Taking heed of the warning inherent in Brian using his full first name, Justin cringed back into the sofa cushions. "Just last night and today," he stammered. "And it was only two pills last night, and er, a line of the powder."

"Christ, Jus." Brian ran a hand through his hair, disordering the brunet strands. "With your allergies - Tylenol could kill you, for fuck's sake - you should never take drugs when you don't have a fuckin' clue what they are. Especially if they're from an untrustworthy source. Who was it that gave them to you anyway?" He was ready to strangle the little fucker, whichever of the go-go boys it was.

"Sven," Justin mumbled. 

"What?" Ted interposed, almost shouting now. "The blond kid who's always staggering around like he's doped up? You know him?" 

Brian was initially surprised that Theodore knew about Sven, but then he realised he might've tried to track down where the GHB that put him into a coma had come from. Sven could well have been one of the sources that Ted's blond twink had used. No wonder the mild-mannered accountant was so upset.

Justin shrugged. "We, like, dance together."

"Jesus fucking Christ," a distressed Ted ranted, pacing to and fro in front of the coffee table, "how the fuck could you do something so fucking stupid?"

Brian was moderately impressed, again. He didn't think he'd ever heard his friend utter so many ‘fucks' at one time. Then he abruptly realised there was one key question neither of them had asked. Gazing directly into Justin's eyes - he'd know if the brat lied - he gritted out, "Why the fuck did you take drugs in the first place? You promised me, Justin."

"Uh, I was tired?" came the lame response.

"Try again," Brian scoffed. "You wouldn't take drugs just because you were tired, even if you were about to fall on your face from lack of sleep."

One beat passed, then another. 

Brian didn't look away from Justin.

Finally, the boy caved. "I was kinda in pain," he mumbled.

"From?" Brian probed. Christ, getting information out of Justin had never been this difficult before. Normally, the kid talked a mile a minute and you couldn't shut him up.

"Uh, I got hurt at school." As he said that, Justin listed to one side, drawing his knees into his body and wrapping his arms around them. He blinked hard, trying to hold back the tears shining in his eyes.

He really did look like he was in pain, Brian thought. There was obviously more to this than just the dude at Babylon twisting his balls. "C'mon, spill," Brian insisted, gentling his voice a little. "And give me the whole story, dammit."

"Fucking Hobbs," Justin mumbled almost inaudibly.

"That bully who accosted you with his buddies outside Babylon?" Ted asked, instantly recognising the name. His hands came up and curled into fists, as if reliving the moment.

"Yeah, him," Justin confirmed, then related the whole tale, starting with the grotty cafeteria lunch on Thursday and how Chris had pushed his face into the plate of food. "Then, when I tried to get up," he explained, "Hobbs shoved me really hard, and I rammed into the sharp corner of the table, groin first."

Brian barely resisted the urge to cup his hands protectively around his own balls. Ted, he noticed, was standing knock-kneed, his hands in front of his junk.

"I, like, crumpled to the floor, landing on my knees," the lad continued. "It's kind of a blur after that, except I remember Chris and his pasty-faced girlfriend taunting me. I mean, I wanted to, like, die 'cause it hurt so bad." 

Justin paused to take a sip from the water bottle.

"What happened next?" Theodore prodded, obviously caught up in the story.

Brian was glad the older man had beaten him to the question. He didn't want it to look like he was waiting with bated breath - even though he was.

"I don't know what I would've done if it hadn't been for Hatchet Face."

Hatchet face? Brian wondered. That was a new one.

"What's a hatchet face?" Ted asked for him.

"Uh, the canteen monitor. She looks way scary, but it turns out she's really nice."

"So she helped you?"

Good old Theodore. Brian could just leave it to him to winkle out the details.

"She, like, scared the piss out of Chris. After everyone scrammed, she got me ice packs and helped me to the nurse's office. When it turned out no one was there, she was gonna call a doctor-"

"Which obviously didn't happen," Brian interrupted, his voice infused with sarcasm. "Why the fuck not?"

"Erm, I asked her not to," Justin fessed up. When both men glowered at him, he elucidated, "I really thought I'd be okay, you know? I mean, it wasn't like I'd never been kneed in the junk before; it happens all the time on the soccer pitch."

Huh, maybe the kid really had played on the team at St James. Brian had had his doubts before now, but he didn't think the kid could've come up with that in the spur of the moment, not when he was still in pain. Wait, shouldn't the pain have abated in no more than fifteen minutes after the injury first occurred? Brian frowned.

"So what the fuck did you do instead?" Ted probed.

"I, uh, asked Hatchet Face to take me to the library, so I could hang out there till I felt better."

"Which you still don't," Brian inserted, "well over two days later."

"I just thought it was taking longer than usual, and that once I was able to rest, I'd be okay."

"Surely the librarian wasn't as fuckin' stupid as you," Brian taunted him. "She must've wanted you to see a doctor."

"She got that I couldn't miss my final exams on Friday, especially the maths one!" Justin shot back at him. "And she probably thought I would feel better," he added more calmly. "She's hardly an expert in sports injuries."

The kid still should've gone to the doctor, Brian thought, opening his mouth to say just that. 

"Didn't either the monitor or the librarian want you to report what happened?" Ted enquired shrewdly.

Christ, he should've thought to ask that, Brian mused. Thank fuck for Theodore; he was a good wingman.

Given the way Justin's face fell, the teenager thought he'd gotten away without having to talk about that. He squirmed for a moment before owning up, "Yeah, both of them. But they don't know what it's like to be the only openly gay guy at St James! It's already hell for me there; if I rat out Hobbs, it'll get even worse."

"Okay," Ted allowed, exchanging a speaking glance with Brian, "I get that. I remember going through the same shit in high school. Let's move on from the library - how'd you get home? And how did you get past Dragon Debbie? There's no way that woman would've let you get away with not going to the doctor."

Justin recounted how Frau Rose had put him in a cab, and how he'd played it off as an upset stomach to Vic when he got home. He wound up with, "And then I went upstairs and kinda passed out on my bed."

"What about in the morning?" Ted asked.

Justin gave them a condensed version of the last two days, describing how he'd gotten around Vic and Debbie.

"Christ, I can't believe Debbie didn't catch on." Brian shook his head in amazement. "But it's up to you to take care of yourself, you dumb little shit! How stupid can you be, dancing when your groin injury wasn't getting better? Taking drugs to numb the pain? Are you brain damaged?"

"He's lucky he isn't!" Ted burst out, beyond aggravated once again. "You could've killed yourself taking that shit, Justin!"

Justin just stared at the accountant dumbly.

"Christ." Ted plopped back down in the armchair, burying his face in his hands for a few moments. When he looked up, his expression was anguished. "Back in May, I took a tweaked-out twinkie home and stupidly let him doctor my drink. It was supposed to make the sex hotter, but what it did was leave me convulsing on the floor."

Justin's eyes had grown bigger and bigger as he spoke, and he was now visibly trembling.

"If the fucking twink hadn't called 911 after he ran out of my apartment, I'd be dead. As it was, I went into a coma," Ted finished up.

His voice laced with bitterness, Brian chimed in, "Yeah. I was the lucky fucking winner of that lottery."

The blond boy looked at him in confusion.

"Theodore decided that should he ever be in a situation where he couldn't make decisions for himself, I should have his durable power of attorney for health care," Brian elaborated. "I had no fucking idea he'd done that until Melanie stormed into my office, dropped the documents on my desk, and tore me a new one."

Justin's eyes were full of sympathy.

"I never wanna be placed in a situation like that again," Brian said, speaking directly to Justin. "I don't want to have to decide whether to pull the plug on someone I... care about."

There was a beat of uncomfortable silence as all three men thought through what had just been revealed. Then, after a shuddering intake of breath, Ted spoke.

"Jesus, I'm so sorry, Brian," he whispered, brown eyes wide and focused on his friend.

Brian shrugged, trying to seem as unbothered as possible. "Water under the bridge, Theodore," he assured the man.

The accountant scowled, stepping closer to Brian, attention successfully diverted from Justin. "Only it's not, Bri," he replied quietly. "We don't talk about it now, it'll just fester and could potentially ruin our friendship."

Brian snorted. "You sound like a book. I'm telling you, I'm fine."

Ted sighed. "I didn't realise the kind of burden I would be putting on you with that power of attorney," he explained, sounding like it hurt him to admit to that. "I guess you don't imagine it actually happening, you know? And at the time, going through my really long list of family and friends-" Ted paused, smiling wryly. "I thought you could handle it best."

Brian wished his friend would just shut up. "Theodore-"

"I mean, I could hardly stick my mum with that responsibility." Ted shrugged. "And I guess I didn't think you'd have a problem. Not like Emmett, or uh, Michael." He stumbled to a halt, looking embarrassed.

His own mum sure as fuck wouldn't have a problem pulling the plug on him, Brian reflected, a bitter taste in his mouth. His dad even less so. It shouldn't still hurt - he'd known since he was a kid that they wished he hadn't been born - but a small part of him still wanted their fucking approval, or something like that. Christ. Brian shook his head, trying to rid himself of his stupidly sentimental thoughts. He didn't want to dwell on those pathetic excuses for parents.

"I think you underestimate Emmett," he ventured. "He can be pretty ruthless."

"Uh, yeah," Ted coughed. "You could be right."

Brian pretended he didn't know the reason for Ted's discomfiture. Michael had, of course, told him about the shrine in Theodore's closet, but he figured it wasn't really any of his business. Besides, it wasn't like it had done either Mikey or Ted any harm - it was just a fantasy, a dead one. Ever since finding out about the underhanded way Michael had hit on Ben at the diner, Theodore barely had a word to say to him; he was coolly polite, and that was it.

A moment of quiet fell over the loft again, prompting both Ted and Brian to come to the simultaneous realisation that they hadn't heard anything from Justin for a while. Turning their heads in unison to the blond, they encountered a slumbering teen sprawled across the couch.

"Justin?" Brian hissed, leaning over the prone body to check if the blond was actually asleep.

"Mmph?" the kid mumbled, eyelids fluttering but not opening.

Ted stepped closer and crouched next to Justin, prying one of his eyelids open with a gentle forefinger. "He's still high. Whatever shit he took, combined with exhaustion, he looks like he's about to pass out again."

Brian's eyebrows furrowed in consternation. "But he was better," he said hesitantly. "Is that normal? Shouldn't we take him to the hospital?"

"No 'ospt'l," the blond mumbled, right arm flailing clumsily. "M' balls don' hurt so bad 'ny more. Not too big."

His lips twitching, Brian glanced at the older man, who was also doing his best to stifle laughter. ‘Big balls' was not something fags normally complained about.

"Tell you what," Theodore suggested, the words coming out with long pauses between them as he struggled to contain his hilarity. "You let Brian have a look at you, and if he," his voice rose in pitch and came out half-strangled, "agrees that, erm, your balls aren't too big, you don't have to go to the hospital."

Brian couldn't help giggling as Ted got to the end of his recommendation. Fortunately, Justin was too out of it to notice or take offence.

Or so he'd assumed. "Summin' funny?" he asked, his eyelids fluttering open again. 

His eyes drifted shut again before either man could answer.

Brian studied the boy, who was lying half on his side, half on his front. Moving his body around would be a lot easier with two people, especially since Justin didn't appear capable of helping. "You want to give me a hand, Theodore?"

"Uh," Ted nervously ran a hand through his hair, "I doubt Justin would appreciate that."

"Theodore," Brian said seriously, a hand on Justin's shoulder, "there is a time for modesty and propriety. This ain't it."

"Brian-"

"He's injured, Ted. Look at it as a medical emergency," he advised. "Will Justin be embarrassed about it later? Sure. Will he appreciate your help? Definitely. So come on and help me."

"Yeah... okay," Ted reluctantly agreed, moving over to flank Brian, much as he had earlier at Babylon. "But uh, I'm not looking at his-"

"Pee-pee?" Brian mocked in a childish voice. The smile he directed at Ted removed any sting from the taunt, however.

Theodore grinned back at him. "Yeah, that."

Brian shrugged. "As long as you're willing to look at his marbles and give me your honest opinion as to whether he needs to go to the hospital, you can keep your eyes off his willy."

"I may regret not wanting to look," Ted observed with a rueful chuckle as they tried to roll Justin onto his back. "It must be quite prodigious, for a size queen like you to go on about it like you do."

"I don't-" Brian began to protest, halting when the kid resisted the change in position, flopping back over onto his side, his face smothered in a throw pillow.

"You do so," Theodore insisted as he again grasped Justin's thighs while Brian took hold of the boy's shoulders.

This time they succeeded in flipping him over.

"The brat needs to go on a diet," Brian huffed.

Ted eyebrows shot up to his hairline. "You wanna chance your other favourite part of his anatomy going, uh, flat?"

"Good point," Brian grunted. He wasn't about to reveal that what had first attracted him to the kid wasn't his round arse - Justin had had his back to him for fuck's sake - or even his package, which had been hidden by baggy jeans, but rather his fucking angelic blond hair and the ridiculous cherub face.

Having successfully turned Justin over to his back, Brian unbuttoned and unzipped the kid's flies as carefully as he could, and with Ted's help, managed to slide the trousers down his muscular thighs. 

Theodore turned an admiring hum into a cough as he took in the bulge outlined beneath the scanty blue briefs. "Uh, those look way tight," he croaked out. "Must be uncomfortable."

"What are you so surprised about? It's the same package you've seen numerous times at the club," Brian remarked drily.

"Yeah, but I didn't have my nose right up in it-" Ted ground to a halt before hastily backtracking, "Uh, I mean-"

Brian burst out laughing, which provided a welcome relief from the tension. "You better not put your nose all up in it now, Theodore."

"No worries," the older man assured him, if a trifle regretfully. Then, his countenance brightening, he noted, "I have a package of my own now." He paused, frowning. "Uh, that didn't come out right. I meant, you know-"

"The professor's?" Brian smirked at him. "You'd better quit while you're ahead," he recommended as he guided Justin's cargo pants further down his legs. "You're just digging yourself deeper and deeper."

"Shutting up now," Ted agreed.

"Christ, I forgot all about the kid's knees," Brian muttered a second later, taking in the swollen black and blue kneecaps he'd just uncovered. Palpating them gently, he commented, "It doesn't feel like there's anything broken, not that I can tell for sure."

"I don't see how Justin could dance if he had broken bones," Ted threw in. "And the skin would probably be broken too, with a bone jutting though it or something."

"Thanks for the visual, Theodore," Brian grunted, the bourbon he'd consumed earlier trying to surge back up his gullet. The idea of Justin being injured like that made him want to hurl.

"Sorry, Bri," Ted apologised, sounding genuinely contrite. "Um, why don't I lift up on the waistband of Justin's briefs and then you can slide them down?"

"Don' wanna," the teenager suddenly mumbled, flinging an arm across his eyes.

After waiting a moment to see if Justin would say anything else, Brian responded to Ted's suggestion. "Good idea, Theodore. That way the fabric won't rub against the kid's nuts and irritate them."

While Ted pulled the material up and away from Justin's groin, Brian carefully tugged the briefs down, the crumpled banknotes that had been stuffed into his underwear drifting down to the floor and landing on the sofa cushions. One of them looked like a C-note, Brian vaguely noticed; there was probably a drunk fag staggering around Babylon wondering what had happened to it, having intended to tip Justin ten dollars, not one hundred.

Justin whimpered, shifting a little when the material clung to his scrotum for a moment, before slipping free of the sensitive skin.

Brian heard Ted gasp loudly at the sight that greeted them. Justin's testicles were bruised black and blue and swollen by what had to be almost half of their usual volume.

"Christ, what'd his balls look like when he was first injured, if that's ‘not too big'?" the older man choked out, his voice filled with horror.

"Good fucking question," Brian muttered. Christ, this was really serious. How could the kid have put off going to the doctor? Hadn't he noticed how bloody awful his nads looked? 

Theodore was obviously thinking along the same lines because he observed, "That must hurt like holy hell. I'd be a blubbering mess if my privates were in that condition." A reluctant note of admiration entering his voice, he added, "The kid really does have balls. He got through a whole day of school - including final exams - while feeling like shit, without any kind of medication."

Brian laughed curtly. "Sure. Until he fucked up by tossing back pills of some sort and snorting that damned mystery powder." He gestured vaguely at the coffee table, where he'd dropped the small baggie that was half full of the unknown substance.

Taking a couple of deep, slow breaths in an effort to calm down - he was so peeved off that he could barely see straight - Brian leaned closer for a better look at Justin's balls. He could ream the boy out later - and he would, as many times as necessary, until he was sure the little twat would never again accept drugs from an unreliable, dodgy source - but now he was going to take care of him.

"Crap. I think there might be a tear in the skin, right next to the raphe," he reported to Ted. "I'm not sure, though, with all the bruising. It could just be discolouration."

The older man leaned over and peered at the spot Brian was pointing to. "I can't tell either," Theodore admitted, shrugging. "Tear or not, we'd better get Justin to the hospital stat. He's gotta see a doctor."

"You'll drive us?" Brian checked.

"Like you could stop me," Ted replied.

Brian flashed a quick smile of thanks at his friend. "Let's get his briefs and trousers back up and fasten them, and then I'll see if I can wake Justin up. It'll be a lot easier to transport him if he cooperates with us."

On the way to the hospital, Brian sat fuming in the back seat. He was exhausted from trying to take care of the kid - and freaked out that it wouldn't be enough, that something would be so wrong that even a surgery couldn't fix it. 

It'd been difficult to cajole Justin into waking up - both Brian and Ted feared for a couple of minutes that the boy might've gone into a coma - but he'd finally come around when Brian splashed him in the face with some of the leftover bottled water. He'd mumbled more incoherent protests against going to the hospital, but the two older men gave that short shrift, bundling him off the sofa, into his jacket, and out of the loft. Brian barely remembered to snatch the Ziploc bag off the coffee table as they were leaving, in case the doctor needed a better idea of what Justin had ingested.

The whole situation had resulted in Brian feeling increasingly short tempered. "Don't you fucking dare fall asleep again," he commanded, reaching forward, grasping Justin by the shoulders, and shaking him lightly. He didn't want to have to fight to get the boy out of the car when they reached the hospital.

"Not sleepin'," came the sullen reply.

"Good," Brian snapped. "Cause I'll be calling Horvath as soon as we get to the hospital, and you better be awake to explain this harebrained idea of yours. I'm sure he'd like to hear all about how you didn't think going to a hospital was necessary and how you decided to self-medicate when the pain got too strong."

Justin sounded like he was about to cry. "No," he whined, "don' call 'im. He's gonna be so dis'poin'ed." 

Brian scoffed, "Well, maybe you should've thought about that before you snorted that shit up your nose." Justin had promised he'd report any and all incidents of bullying to the bluff detective - this was a fucking major incident and the kid had again chosen not to say or do anything about it.

"I was doin' so well," the teenager mumbled, craning his head around so he could see Brian, big fat tears rolling silently down his flushed cheeks. "I wan' 'im to be proud 'f me. Like a dad shoul' be, y' know?"

"You were doing well," Ted assured him from the driver's seat, patting the teen's thigh softly. "I saw how hard you were working; I could tell you were saving for something. Which just makes me wonder why you would shell out any of your hard-earned money for drugs."

Justin muttered something under his breath.

"What?" Brian asked, leaning closer. "Come again?"

"I said, I didn' pay fo' it," Justin repeated. "Sven gives 'em out fo' free."

"You what? For fuck's sake, Justin!" Brian exploded. "Do you ever use your head? You ever wonder why Sven hands that stuff out for free? Doesn't that sound the least bit suspicious to you?"

Justin recoiled, more tears streaming from his eyes.

Briefly taking one hand off the steering wheel, Ted patted the distraught boy on the thigh again. "That does sound dodgy, Justin, don't you think? It's possible Sven's passing out the drugs for free to get his ‘target' hooked," he explained, his voice shaking a little. "Then, once they're addicted, he charges for the next dose."

"But," the teenager protested, suddenly seeming more alert, "he was givin' them out to, like, ever'body, and nobody paid anythin'."

"You saw him give drugs to other go-go boys?" Brian inquired sharply. He couldn't believe drug deals were openly going down in the dancers' dressing area, where anyone could walk in on it.

"Uh, jus' one guy. But he had lotsa pills, even gave me extras."

"These people are predators, Justin," Brian said, still pissed beyond belief but trying to control himself so as not to further upset the blond. "This Sven saw you were exhausted and in pain, and he used the opportunity to his advantage. Would you have taken anything from him otherwise? Tell me the truth."

"No," Justin replied in a small voice. 

"What were you thinking then?" Brian yelled, his patience running out. "You knew it was a bad idea. You promised me you wouldn't do it and yet, at the first sign of trouble, you caved. Did you hesitate for even a second?"

Justin turned, struggling against the seat belt so he could face Brian more fully. His eyes were flashing with anger, his pupils now almost back to their normal size. "You take drugs all the time, Bri," he accused, his words barely slurred. "All the time. For no reason whatsoever. So this lecture is a bit rich coming from you!"

Well, if nothing else, the argument seemed to have sobered Justin up better than anything else they'd tried that night, thought Brian. The adrenaline was probably doing its job.

"Justin," he said in his most reasonable tone, but was interrupted by the brat-

"Where were you last night anyway?" Justin asked, his voice dropping to a whisper.

Brian felt like he'd taken an arrow to his chest. 

Before guilt could overwhelm him - he should've been there for the boy - the Mercedes came to a stop and Ted announced, "We're here."

Oh thank God, thought Brian, sagging in relief for a moment before opening his door. 

Guilt eating at him, Brian couldn't think of anything to say to the lad as he helped him out of the front passenger seat. Fortunately, sliding off the seat and standing up required all of Justin's concentration, and by the time he was upright, he'd evidently forgotten about anything else.

"How far?" the boy asked, fresh tears springing to his eyes.

"We're in the drop-off zone," Ted replied. "I'll move the car once we've gotten you inside."

With Justin between them, their arms around each other's waists, Brian and Ted ushered the boy into the emergency room, the doors sliding open as they approached.

They were greeted by mayhem. Almost every seat was occupied. A young man was holding a piece of gauze to his bleeding forehead. A little girl was wailing in her mother's lap next to him, the woman's blouse fisted in grubby hands. Right next to the sliding doors sat a teenager with what looked like a heavily infected finger, pus oozing out from beneath a bandage. Beside him was a woman with a split lip and the beginnings of a black eye, who was clutching one arm to her chest. In the middle of the room, a teenager with multiple facial piercings, scrapes visible through his torn jeans, was rocking to and fro, moaning, "I want my mum." Someone of an indeterminate sex, an oxygen mask over their mouth, was lying on a stretcher near the elevator.

"Christ," Ted muttered, "this place is a madhouse."

Justin whined, "Yeah, let's go back home."

Brian steeled himself. "No chance, Sunshine. Come on, let's get you checked in." He and Ted propelled Justin forward, joining the queue at the reception desk.

A man who was leaning heavily on a cane, one arm in a makeshift sling, shoved a clipboard at the nurse who was signing him in. "These fees are insane. You would take money out of a dead man's hands!" he shouted. "This is daylight robbery, this is!"

Justin tugged at Brian's peacoat. "Oh no, we hafta leave. I'm on my parents' insurance, and I don't have my card with me. Besides," he added, his voice quavering, "my dad would shit a brick if he found out why I was here."

"Don't worry about it," Brian replied as they edged forward in line. He also would rather keep Craig out of it; the man had a nasty temper, so he was more than ready to pay out of his own pocket. He didn't care how much it cost. He just needed Justin to be okay - and then he could yell at him as much as he wanted for being such a stupid little shit.

When they reached the front of the line a few minutes later, Brian was prepared to take over the communication. If he left it to Justin, the kid would doubtless tell the nurse he was fine.

The harried looking nurse glanced up from her computer, where she'd been entering the details for the previous person, a young woman who looked like someone had used her for a punching bag. "Which one of you needs to see a doctor?" she asked.

"Him," Ted piped up, pointing at Justin with his free hand.

"Can I see some ID?"

Removing his arm from Brian's waist, Justin fumbled around inside his jacket for a moment before extracting his wallet. His attempt to open it one-handed didn't go very well, the wallet dropping to the floor at the boy's feet.

"Shit," the blond cursed, looking down in dismay.

"I'll get it," Ted assured Justin, coming to the rescue again. "Just hold onto the counter for a sec, okay?" He stepped to the side and placed the hand that had been around his waist on the edge of the reception desk before bending down and retrieving the wallet.

"Give it here," Brian directed as the older man rose to his feet, one of his knees popping audibly.

Brian thumbed at the billfold, flipping it open and removing the teenager's driving licence, a snort of amusement escaping him as he handed the ID over to the nurse. Even a kid as photogenic as Justin couldn't survive the DMV's camera unscathed; his hair was plastered to his head on one side and flying every whichaway on the other, and his eyes were nearly crossed.

As he waited for the nurse, whose badge bore the name ‘Diane,' to record the pertinent details from the licence, Brian idly thumbed through the currency dividers, finding only two much-creased one dollar bills. Surely the kid should have more money than that. Heck, he raked in way more than two dollars in half an hour at the diner.

His musings were interrupted by the nurse. "We've got a Justin Taylor on file who matches your driver's license," the grey-haired woman noted. "We can bill the insurance on-"

"That won't be necessary, Diane," Brian inserted smoothly, smiling at the nurse. Setting down Justin's wallet, he pulled out his own and withdrew both his driving licence and a credit card. "Just charge everything to my card."

The nurse's eyebrows rose as she looked at the credit card and then up at Brian.

Even in an ER as busy as Allegheny General's, they probably didn't see many Amex Platinum cards, Brian thought a little smugly. 

"We'll need your signature authorising us to bill you, Mr Kinney," the nurse commented, masking her surprise well as she passed a billing form across the counter. She then tacked on a cautionary warning, "A hospital visit can be quite cost-"

Brian cut her off again with, "I understand," dashing off his signature and handing the authorisation back to her. He didn't want Justin getting any more freaked out about money than he already was. 

"Why do you need to see a doctor, Mr Taylor?" Diane addressed Justin.

"A bully at school kicked him in the balls," Brian responded for him, "and several days later, it's still hurting him so much he can barely sit. His balls are blue and look pretty bad-"

"Brian," Justin hissed, his face going pink. "You don't have to tell her all of that!"

"They need to know everything, Sunshine, so they know how serious it is," the adman told him, eyes not leaving the grey-haired nurse behind the desk.

"Your friend is right," Diane agreed, nodding gravely at Justin. "Even though you'll be asked the same questions again, it helps us to form a complete picture. It also ensures that the patients who most urgently need care are seen first."

"Yeah, okay." Justin nodded in understanding. 

Is there anything else we should know?"

Brian quirked an eyebrow at Justin, giving the boy a chance to answer for himself.

"I've had a headache since it happened," Justin admitted. "Sometimes it gets so bad that I can hardly think. I've been feeling dizzy, and my stomach has been, like, really upset."

"He threw up all over himself - and Brian," Ted helpfully interjected.

Justin's blush deepened.

Diane looked like she might be hiding a smile as she prompted, "Anything else?"

"Not unless having trouble sleeping counts. I can't get comfortable."

"I've noted that down for the doctor," the nurse informed him. "All I need now is your consent to be treated here at Allegheny General." Diane placed a form in front of him, on which she'd printed his name, date of birth, and hospital identification number.

Leaning heavily against the counter, Justin signed on the line marked with a red ‘x'.

The pen wavered as he scrawled his name, leaving a barely legible signature, but Brian supposed it was good enough to satisfy legal requirements.

Diane accepted the signed consent form without quibbling. "Would you like a copy of our privacy practices?"

The blond shook his head no, right as Ted firmly said, "Yes."

"Always get any paperwork that pertains to your rights," the accountant chided. "You never know when it might come in handy. I'll hold onto this for you," he added, scooping up the double-sided sheet of paper that Diane placed in front of Justin.

The blond boy gave a half-hearted shrug of agreement.

"I'm afraid you may have quite a long wait." Diane nodded at the chock-full waiting area. "There was a pile-up over on I-376, and as if that wasn't enough for one night, there was also a small house fire a couple blocks away from here."

Brian exchanged a look with Ted, both of them wondering where on 376, since the interstate fed into Liberty Avenue as well as other major arteries. Justin wasn't paying attention, his eyes sliding closed as he rested against Brian.

"There won't be a doctor available to examine you until the more critical cases have been treated," the nurse concluded.

Brian nodded in acknowledgment before moving away, nudging Justin along with him, so the next person in line could register with the nurse. He scanned the room but didn't see any empty chairs, so he leaned up against an empty patch of wall - even wall space was at a premium right now - loosely encircling Justin with his arms. The boy immediately dozed off, snoring softly. 

"I'll go move my car, and then I'll come back," Theodore told him. "If both of us keep an eye out, we should be able to snag seats as soon as they free up."

"Thanks, Theodore." Brian was beyond grateful that his friend was with him. He couldn't have looked after Justin by himself.

Ted gave him a funky little wave before striding out of the ER.

Right as Ted returned, less than ten minutes later, three adjacent seats were vacated, the mother with the inconsolable little girl and the man with the gauze still pressed to his forehead getting up as a unit when an indecipherable name, sounding something like ‘catsee,' was called out. Conveniently, an elderly gent who'd been sitting next to them, hacking up a phlegmy storm, stood up at the same time and tottered away behind another nurse.

Theodore rushed over to lay claim to the chairs, while Brian gently shook Justin to wake him back up. "C'mon, Sunshine," he urged, "we can sit down now."

Justin glanced around, and spotting Ted, cooperatively hobbled along next to Brian. He baulked though when they reached the chairs, eyeing askance the hard plastic seats. "Don't wanna sit down," he objected. "Hurts."

Brian assessed the situation. "How about I sit down first and you lean against me?" he suggested. "Or you can lie on your side between us, rest your head in my lap?"

Ted sat down, smiled encouragingly, and patted his thighs, indicating his willingness to be used as a footstool.

Justin took his time considering both options - well, either that or he blanked out for a moment - before nodding. "Right, okay. I think I'll try my side. Will you help?" he asked, a pleading look in his big blue eyes.

"Sure," the brunet assured the kid, carefully helping him settle onto his right hip, legs up across Ted's thighs. Brian then slid into his own seat, offering his own legs as a headrest.

Justin winced in discomfort but didn't complain again, so Brian figured he was fine for the moment. 

Soon thereafter, the fingers clutching at his black leather pants relaxed their grip, and the boy began snoring softly again. Might as well call Horvath while Justin was sleeping, Brian decided. He fished his cell phone out of his jacket, scrolled through his contacts and pressed the green ‘dial' symbol.

The phone was picked up on the second ring. "Horvath." 

"Hello, detective, this is Brian Kinney."

"Good," was the next word out of the detective's mouth.

That wasn't quite the greeting Brian had expected.

"I could use a diversion," Carl continued. "I've been stuck on a boring stakeout for the past five hours, and I still have three more to go." 

This wasn't going to be the kind of diversion the man wanted, Brian mused regretfully. 

"Kinney?" Horvath prompted when he didn't say anything for a couple of seconds.

"It's Justin. He's in the hospital," Brian blurted out. Christ, he immediately wanted to take the words back. Surely, there had been a better way to phrase things.

"Justin?" The gruff policemen's concern was made evident in that single word. "What happened?"

Brian glanced down at Justin to make sure he was still sleeping. He didn't think he could bear to receive another teary-eyed look from the kid if he was listening in to what was, essentially, a conversation with someone the boy appeared to regard as his ‘dad.'

"He had a, uh, run-in with a bully at school," Brian tried to explain, unsure as to how much he should reveal over the phone. 

"What? When? Didn't the fall semester end yesterday?"

Despite the gravity of the situation, Brian had to smile. He wondered if Horvath realised he was acting like the brat's dad, knowing Justin's schedule by heart like that. "Uh, no, it was a couple days ago," he divulged.

"He's been in the hospital for two days, and no one thought to call me until now? What's wrong with him?"

"We're at the ER now, waiting to have him checked out," Brian managed to say. Fuck, he'd never had so much trouble coherently presenting information. Damned little twat had him tied up in knots, Brian thought, running the fingers of his free hand through blond strands when Justin whimpered in his sleep. "He was kicked in the junk, and it's been getting progressively worse, to the point where he can't function." The actual details of what had happened could be shared later on, including the fact that Justin was responsible for letting it go for so long.

"Where are you? Allegheny?"

"Yeah," Brian replied wearily.

"I'll be there as soon as-" 

Something must've happened at the stakeout, since the next thing Brian heard was a beeping tone, indicating the call had been disconnected. Thumbing his own phone off, he swivelled his head from side to side to ease the tension in his neck. As he tilted his head to the left, Brian noticed that Ted's gaze was fixed on the doorway to the examination rooms, his left leg jiggling. The older man was pale, his skin clammy. 

He must be reliving what had happened to him, Brian realised, although Ted couldn't possibly remember the days before he woke up in his hospital room. Brian flushed with embarrassment as he recalled just what had awakened Ted. Not one of his finer moments, fucking a nurse while his friend lay comatose in the neighbouring bed. 

Brian wove his fingers through Justin's, holding on tightly. It had turned out okay for Theodore, so it had better be the same for Justin, he half-prayed, half-threatened whatever deity might be listening.

When the woman with the split lip and emerging black eye looked down her nose at their entwined hands, Brian arched an eyebrow at her, daring her to say something. She opened her mouth but then closed it, her lips pressed together, before turning so that she had her back to them.

Fucking straight people. He needed the contact with Justin, Brian thought, to feel the kid's skin against his own. His thoughts drifted back to Justin's plaintive question, Where were you last night? and he once more felt that arrow thud home in his heart.

Sure, the evening of booze and weed had been fun, but the way he felt this morning? Not worth it. Heck he hadn't awakened until the afternoon, and then he basically just stumbled around with a hangover, useless, until he got ready for Babylon.

And what if Justin had called him? What if he had needed him? Drugged out of his mind as he had been, Brian wouldn't have been able to do anything. Actually, Justin had needed him. He needed him and Brian wasn't there. If Brian had been sober, he would've been at Babylon, keeping an eye on Justin, and those two fags probably wouldn't have dared to attack the kid. In fact, Justin might not have taken drugs in the first place, if he knew Brian was at the bar, watching him while he danced.

And to think the situation could have been even worse. A shudder rippled through him as he remembered what had almost happened to him in the backroom. 

Justin was smaller and cuter - tweaked as he had been tonight, he wouldn't have stood a chance without intervention either.

Brian closed his eyes, trying to dismiss the insistent visions of Justin getting attacked. Or going into convulsions and being carted off to the hospital. He swore to himself that he would never be unreachable again, and that if he promised the kid that he'd meet him somewhere, he'd damned well be there instead of passed out at the loft.

Christ, he could've even burned his apartment building down, he now realised, remembering the discarded joint. His bedding could've caught fire, quickly spreading throughout the loft, leaving only charred remains behind. Given how stoned and drunk he was, it was likely the smoke alarm wouldn't have even roused him.

The damage obviously could've been a lot worse than a little hole in his pricey duvet. Huh. Maybe the brat wasn't the only one who needed to learn something from this whole fiasco.