PART II of II

Justin’s POV

The Face came lurching out of the fog of confused memories very suddenly, its clarity contrasting sharply with the distorted, swirling images that still clouding my mind.

And with that ugly, rat-like face came the feeling of those hands, groping me everywhere, the fingers forcing themselves onto, over and into places they had no right to be. I remembered my helplessness, knowing what was happening but not being able to stop or even impede it.

Pain. That face had brought pain; claw-like nails scratching at my skin, fingers viscously twisting, clenching and pinching my flesh, pulling at the nipple ring so savagely it felt like it was being ripped out, hands tearing at my hair. Teeth had bitten down on my lip so hard it had bled; I remembered tasting the blood as a mouth was forced on mine, suffocating me. 

But I hadn’t been raped…had I? I knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt that it was what my attacker had intended to do. But I would remember that kind of pain, wouldn’t I? What could possibly have cut such an animalistic intention short?

A horrifying thought suddenly occurred to me.

There was a huge, gaping hole in my memory…What if my aggressor had taken me somewhere while I was unconscious? What if he had been savouring me, to torture and torment me? He could be here right now, watching me, biding his time.

I sat up so abruptly it left me reeling with dizziness, causing my surroundings to spin and swirl nauseatingly. That thought had frightened me beyond anything I had thought imaginable, but something deep in my subconscious managed to recognize and register where I was. The panicked cry I had been prepared to utter died in my throat.

I was in Brian’s loft, on Brian’s bed, nestled beneath Brian’s duvet…That meant that I’d had been under his eye and in his care…I’d been safe. My feeling of relief was staggering.

As the fear began to ebb and flow away slowly, questions began to form in droves, circling around my mind as if bore on wispy black wings; How had I gotten here from that shadowy alley way? What’d happened to the owner of The Face? Had someone called the police? How long had I been asleep? Why was I fully dressed when I was sure I had only been wearing the hot pants?

What the fuck had happened to me?

Brian would know. Surely it had been he who’d brought me back here; at least, that’s what I desperately hoped. I threw back the covers and stumbled unsteadily off the bed, falling off the platform a bit awkwardly, with the idea of getting up and going to look for him. 

But, of course, there was no need for that. Brian’s hyper-sensitive ears heard my blundering and he materialized by the foot of the bed within a few nanoseconds of my getting off it. He looked like shit; unshaven, with dark circles under his eyes, but his expression was clearly one of immense relief. 

I actually saw his instinctual move to reach out to me checked by caution for what my reaction to be being touched might be. In a way I was glad, because right now I didn’t want comfort or pity. What I wanted now was answers. 

Abandoning my premature attempt to stand, I scrambled back onto the bed clumsily and crawled across it to him. I seized his left hand in both of mine, yanking on it and almost causing him to topple down on top of me. His fingers curled lightly around my hand as I looked desperately up into his face. 

“Brian, what happened? What happened to me?” I demanded, desperate for the answer but at the same time acutely dreading it. “I can’t…I don’t remember…I couldn’t do anything…”

Brian didn’t seem to hear me. My taking of his hand seemed to have eased his reserve about touching me, and he laid two fingers on my cheek before sliding them down to take hold of my chin, forcing my head back to look him in the eyes. There was a hint of harshness in his softly spoken words, and they were thickly laced with concern and chastisement. 

“You stupid little twat. How many times did I warn you to be careful?” 

“Brian, please!” I implored him, feeling panic starting to rise in my voice. I squeezed his hand tightly, feeling his tarsal bones move and grind together, putting my desperation into something palpable. “I’m sorry! Just, please, tell me what happened!”

“What happened?” I could hear the hysteria beginning to edge out in his own voice, driven by the hours of intense worry he’d just been through. He leaned down and put his face very close to mine, and I was alarmed by the haunted look in eyes.

“I’ll tell you what happened. Some psycho saw you shaking your hot little ass in those come-fuck-me-panties and decided he wanted a piece of it. You made it so goddamn easy for the motherfucker, Justin- all he had to do was slip you some rophie and he could have fucked you unconscious, you stupid little shit. And you can be damn sure he wouldn’t have been wearing a condom. I don’t even want imagine what else he had planned for you…” 

His words slammed into me like a sledgehammer, literally knocking the wind out of me. It wasn’t being told what’d happened that distressed me; I wasn’t so out of it that I’d missed the ‘COULD have fucked you unconscious’…

But knowing that I’d so disappointed and distressed Brian filled me with such deep humiliation and shame it left me utterly shattered. He was right, I had been a stupid, careless, little blond boy…not the man I’d tried so hard to prove to him I was. 

The effects of the drug seemed to have left all my emotions lying raw and exposed on the surface, and every thought and feeling seemed magnified and blown out of proportion. I actually felt pain as if Brian had struck me. I couldn’t take it, it just wouldn’t compute.

“Justin, breathe, for fuck’s sake!” 

I felt Brian shaking me roughly by the shoulder, his alarmed tone making me realize that I’d stopped performing that essential bodily function. Desperate to obey him, I sucked air into my starving lungs in short, sharp gasps, starting to hyperventilate. 

Brian easily broke my death grip on his hand and manoeuvred himself to kneel behind me, forcing me to sit forward with one arm wrapped around my chest and under my arms, the other under my shirt, rubbing firm, steady circles into my back.

“It’s alright, calm down. Just breathe…that’s it…don’t fucking scare me like that.”

The gentle, tender tone in his voice was like a dangling thread of hope and I grasped at it desperately. As soon Brian’s hold on me relaxed enough, I shuffled around to face him and flung my arms around his neck, burying my face in the side of his throat, savagely ordering back the hot tears that were threatening to spill. 

I was terrified Brian would fling me off, but instead, I felt his arm circle my waist and his hand continue to rub my back soothingly.

“I didn’t mean to be so harsh,” he told me softly after what felt like an age, letting his gentle caresses and the nearness of his body speak the apology for him. To my horror and disbelief, I heard his voice breaking slightly. “You scared the living shit out of me, Sunshine. I can’t…I can’t bear to think of what would’ve happened to you if I hadn’t been there.”

“You were there?” I asked, looking up at his sharply. He didn’t have to answer; it was all written in the depths of his green-gold eyes. 

And quite suddenly, as if it had been the key to a locked door of memory, I remembered him there; remembered his face, remembered his soothing voice, his arms holding me and carrying me to safely, his fingers doing up the zipper of my sweater and tying the laces of my shoes because my own refused to do it for themselves…My saviour.

I tightened my arms around Brian’s neck, trying to let my actions do the talking for me, because I couldn’t think of a single thing to say to him. ‘I’m sorry’ and ‘thank you’ seemed so puny and insignificant and grossly ineffective. Even “I love you” didn’t seem strong enough to express what I was feeling.

Brian tried to pull away after a few moments, but I held him tightly close, not caring if I was being childish and clingy. So we stayed like that, kneeling together on his bed in each other’s arms, while Brian gently told me everything that had happened the night before. I listened, trying to make myself hear it as if it were a story that had happened to someone else.

The tactic worked until Brian got to the part about The Face, a sociopath by the name of Bart Jursye, who had been arrested and was now in police custody. I couldn’t help myself from remembering again those savage, invading, violating fingers, hands and lips. I felt bile start rising in my throat as his rancid smell seemed to fill my nostrils again; the stench of stale drink and BO.

When Brian began to describe what Jursye had been doing to me before he had pulled him off, I pushed away from Brian, suddenly not wanting to be touched anymore. Brian tried to take my hand, but I pulled away and got off the bed.

“I want a shower,” I told him abruptly, not looking at his face, afraid that I’d see distress and hurt in his eyes. “I want to shower alone.”

“That’s OK,” Brian assured me quietly, gently, sounding understanding. “Go take your shower. But I need to finish telling you what happened…you need to face this, Justin.”

That was the third time he’d used my given name in less than twenty minutes. He’d called me by it directly so rarely these days that it sounded strange coming from his lips. I knew why he was using it now, and I felt guilty for scaring him so badly. 

But a very small part of me was rejoicing inside; he’d been worried senseless because of me, because he cared about me so deeply. He really did love me, however deep down.

~~~

Brian’s POV

I watched Justin through the glass wall of the shower partition as he scrubbed himself viscously with the soap-saturated sponge, observing him from my vantage point just outside the bathroom door. He must have turned the shower on as hot as it would go, because I could only just make him out through the steam.

I didn’t want him to know I was watching him- he had specified he wanted to be alone- but I was too concerned about him not to. I’d heard enough tales of assault victims going at their skin with nail brushes, pot scrubbers, even wool carders, trying to scrub away that feeling of violation. Scrubbing until their own blood came up to cleanse and purge them from the inside.

I’d certainly step in if Justin ever tried anything like that…he had enough abrasions and contusions to worry about.

He had his back to me, and even from a distance, I could make at the long, deep red scratches, some so deep they were almost cuts, running from shoulder to buttocks, and more raking along the back of his thighs. There was some bruising on his lower back, and deeper, more extensive bruises along his hips. They were fingerprint-shaped bruises…I wished again that I’d given into the instinct and killed that motherfucker.  

Last night, I’d gotten a good look at his injuries while I helped him dress before I took him home. Mercifully, there had been no damage to his beautiful face- except for the swollen lip. There were scratches on his chest and neck, but not as deep as those on his back, and it looked as if a chuck of his hair had actually been ripped out of his scalp by the roots. 

The only serious injury had been due to his nipple ring having been ripped clean off on one side, leaving a bloody gash. Afraid the dangling metal would snag on something and cause more damage, I’d managed to tease what remained of the ring and the bar out of Justin’s nipple without too much trouble. 

That had been last night when he’d still been semi-conscious and, judging by his yelps and whimpers, the procedure had obviously been considerably painful. But it was a lot less painful that the thing ripping out on its own accord.

Justin was in the shower a long, long time. It was only when I was convinced he may have depleted the whole of Pittsburgh’s hot water supply, that I went in, turned the shower off, and gently pulled him out by the arm.

I held out a towel to him, but he didn’t seem to acknowledge the gesture, he just stood there dripping wet, his skin red and pink from the scrubbing and scolding heat of the shower. I would have wrapped the towel around him myself, but he looked as if he was struggling to put something into words.

“I’m sorry. For…everything,” he finally said softly, looking at a point about three inches above my left shoulder. “I…it was all my fault. I guess I was sort of asking for it…”

“No,” I barked so loudly it startled him and he jumped. I moved swiftly to clamp my hands down on his bare shoulders, trying not to allow my resolve to be distracted by the soft, warm skin under my fingertips. “Look at me. Now listen. Are you listening?”

Justin tried to shift his eyes away from mine, but I moved my hands from his shoulders to his face, forcing him to meet my gaze. He looked as if he didn’t want to hear what I was going to say, but realized I was not going to giving him a choice in the matter. His eyes met mine and he maintained the contact as he gave a jerky nod.

“It was NOT your fault. You can’t ever let yourself or anyone else think that. You were careless, yes, but that doesn’t make it your fault you were assaulted. And don’t you DARE fucking believe you deserved this! That’s the kind of mentality these sexual predators prey on. No one ever, ever asks to be taken against their will.”

I could see Justin’s Adam’s apple bobbing in his throat and saw the glassy sheen reflected in his eyes. I’d always been genuinely distressed by Justin’s tears, but I told myself I couldn’t be distracted by them this time; I had to stand firm until I’d made him understand.

“Look at me,” I ordered when Justin shut his eyes to hold the tears at bay. When he opened them in response to my command, the tears came in shimmering rivulets that he made no move to wipe away. He looked up into my face as I moved one hand to the back of his neck and gripped it gently but firmly.

“People see this,” I explained to him softly, running my free hand lightly down his chest and abdomen, sliding it down his side before letting it rest at the base of his spine, just above the swell of his ass. 

“They see it and they want it. They want you. It’s what makes you hot, what makes you desirable. It’s why I picked you up that first night. You know I could’ve had anyone I wanted; I had my pick. But I wanted you.”

Justin closed his eyes and took a deep shuddering breath, as if trying to calm himself. The tears seeping from beneath his eyelids began to flow more steadily, but he didn’t utter any sound. 

I took my hand off the small of his back and laid it tenderly on his face, smearing the tears along his cheekbones with my thumb. He felt his hands come up and his fingers wrap themselves around my forearms. I made him look at me again before going on.

“Your attacker didn’t see you as a human being; he saw you as an object, as a conquest. Those humanitarian rules and the boundaries that usually keep us safe just don’t exist in his world. You were something so perfect and flawless he knew he could never have it…which was why he targeted you.” 

“It’s the one flaw in being attractive; take it from someone who knows. A lot of people don’t look past your exterior to see that you’re actually a real person inside. Even I used to believe that what was on the outside was all the mattered…until I met you. You proved to me that even the most gorgeous people can be flawlessly beautiful inside and out.”

Justin was crying in earnest now and I finally giving into the desire to comfort him. I pulled him into my arms and held him tightly against my chest, feeling the wetness of his cheek against my throat and his damp hair against my face. I felt his hands slide up my back to cup my shoulders. We stood in the embrace for what felt like a long time before I felt him start to shiver.

I pulled away, picked up the abandoned towel, and wrapped it tightly around him, securing it in the frount. Before I let him go, I put both hands on his face again and moved to stand right up against him. His eyes, azure and indigo, locked with mine.

“You can’t help being so beautiful, Sunshine. But you do have to accept the consequences of it. You have got to be more fucking careful; I can’t always be there to protect you. I told you I wanted you safe so for God’s sake and mine, please don’t ever be so fucking careless again. Swear to me that you won’t.”

“I swear,” he replied, softly but resolutely.

“Good.” I bent down to kiss his lips softly, lingering over it until I felt him kiss me back. I let him go and gave him a gentle prod back into the bedroom. “Now get dressed. We need to be at the medi-clinic by 10. The police want a blood sample and I want all those cuts and bruises looked at. Then we’re going to the police station so that you can make a statement.”

“A statement?” Justin froze in the act of drying himself off, suddenly looking uneasy, his hands going to the scratches on his neck and chest. “But I…I can’t remember…”

“You don’t want to remember,” I corrected, “but you have to try. I want this psycho put away for good.” When Justin still looked distinctly distressed, I added, “I want you safe. I want to know for sure that he won’t come after you again.”

“Will they let you come with me while I’m making it?” Justin asked, becoming so agitated he didn’t seem to realize he was trying to pull his head through the sleeve of his t-shirt.

“I don’t think they will, Sunshine.” I told him truthfully, moving to help him put the right body parts through the right holes. “But you can handle it, I know you can. And I’ll be right there when it’s over. I promise I won’t abandon you; you and I are gonna get through this.”

Justin reached up and put a hand on the side of my neck, and pulled my forehead down to his. He was silent for several moments, until I closed my eyes and gave in to his touch and his soft voice.

“I know you’re right about gorgeous people,” he whispered. “Your beautiful face, Brian, your perfect body; it’s just the smallest, tiniest reflection of how beautiful I know you are inside.”


THE END
 

…at least for this story. I’m not sure I can resist the swarms of sequel plot bunnies…