Justin’s POV I was walking along a dark, unlit corridor. There was blackness all around me, the only light an eerie flame-like flickering emitting from a crack behind a door at the end of the hallway. The door seemed to float towards me, and I watched in fascination as a hand, my hand, pushed it open gently, the ancient hinges squeaking with rust and neglect. I found myself in a large room lit by blue-green fire, burning not in a grate or fireplace, but licking up the walls at the far side of the room. There was nothing in the room except for a solitary figure kneeling right at its centre, dripping wet as if they had just climbed out of a swimming pool. The figure, silhouetted by the dancing flames, was tracing something in the thick grey dust upon the floor; the words ‘ALL THIS FOR YOU’. The flames suddenly flared and began to spread, bathing the figure in a halo of ghostly light. I realized only then that it was not water saturating the figure’s clothes, dripping from its hair, collecting in dark pools on the bare floor around it… It was blood. As the flames blazed again and enveloped the figure, it lifted its head and looked right at me. I was staring into Ethan’s dead, lifeless eyes. ~~~ Brian’s POV I’d never seen anyone have a nightmare like the one Justin had that night. I was no stranger to the furies that terrorized his dreams; in the months following the bashing, they used to come in swarms, in droves. I vividly remember how Justin would wake with a jolt, whimpering, yelling, crying out, clinging to me as I held him and whispered calming, soothing words into his ear. But this had been different; a dream laced with some unearthly evil. I’d been lying on my bed, not so much dozing as on screensaver, when the thump of his body hitting the floor had me up on and on my feet within a matter of nanoseconds. My immediate thought was that he’d just rolled off the couch, but as I’d listened for his voice or any sound from him, all I heard a strange, frantic scrabbling, like hundreds of mice running across the floor. I’ll never forget the look in Justin’s unseeing eyes when I finally reached him; it was of pure, unadulterated, abject terror. Although still asleep, his eyes were wide and unblinking, his mouth hanging open slightly. He was laying face-down, his good knee propping him up on that side, each erratic exhaled breath coming out as a high-pitched whimper of panic. The scrabbling sound was made by his fingers and nails scratching and scarping at the hardwood, literally trying to claw his way through it. Trying the escape from whatever demonic unseen phantom was pursuing him through the dark places of his mind. It had scared the living shit out of me. Even now, almost forty minutes later, I could feel Justin’s heart hammering under my fingertips. My hand was laid flat on his sternum, under his damp shirt and against his skin, feeling both his heart beat and the rise and fall of his chest as he breathed. Even though I’d wrapped the duvet around the two of us, he was still shivering with shock and a coldness that had nothing to do with temperature. We were lying on my bed, Justin on his back because of his knee, which hadn’t benefited from writhing around on the floor. My shoulder ached in protest from having to prop myself up on my side for so long, but I refused to turn my attention from him even for a second. My arm was tight around Justin’s shoulders, his head resting in the crook of my elbow, and I could feel the dampness of his sweat-soaked hair against my skin of my forearm. He’d been almost silent after I’d carried him to the bed to calm and placate him. He refused to tell me what the nightmare had been about, although I thought I could guess. “I think Ethan’s dead.” He spoke suddenly, startling me. I felt the words vibrate against my hand, and I rubbed his chest soothingly in response. I looked down into his face and noticed how his eyes stood out electric blue against his pale, sweaty skin. “He’s not,” I assured Justin gently, drawing little circles across his sternum with my fingertips. “Was that what your dream was about? It was just a nightmare, Sunshine, it didn’t really happen.” “But he said he’d kill himself if I left him…” Justin protested weakly, shifting against my arm to get a better look at my face. I pushed him down onto his back again gently. “That was a lie; it was to scare you into doing what he wanted.” I carefully pulled my hand out from under Justin’s shirt and cupped his cheek in my palm. “Now that he knows your safe with me, there’s no reason for him to do it anymore.” “How’d you know?” Justin asked, putting both hands up to hold onto my forearm. I slid my hand off his face and took one of his hands in mine. He gripped it tightly in both of his, resting all three of our hands on his chest, looking pleadingly up into my face. “Because Ethan is a coward.” I tried not to spit the words out as if Chin-rat’s name was something foul-tasting. “If he wanted to die, he wouldn’t have cowered and begged so pathetically when I offered to do him the honours.” “He was scared of you,” Justin said quietly, as if thinking aloud. “He didn’t even do anything when you took me away. I thought he’d beg me to stay or something…I thought he’d tell me how much he loved me…” “He didn’t.” My words were so harsh that they caused Justin to jump and look up at me with something bordering on fear. I tightened my grip around Justin’s shoulders and squeezed his hand, looking directly into his eyes. “He didn’t love you, Justin. He loved playing with you, he loved torturing you. He loved to have a puppet, a trophy, who would do anything for him. He loved the rise he got from scaring the shit out of you. He loved how you were too afraid to tell anyone. That’s not love, Justin, that’s hate.” Justin’s face crumpled and, already weakened and vulnerable, he began to cry the tears he’d been holding back for three months. I know I’d been too harsh, too insensitive, but I’d wanted to get the point across; crystal clear in all its ugly brutality. “I hate him,” Justin chocked out, pulling my hand up to his mouth as if trying to suppress the torrent of emotion. “I hate him…” I let him cry the storm out to its petering cessation, holding him patiently and not interfering with the outpouring of regret and cruel realization. When his sobs had been reduced to little sniffles, I tenderly kissed his forehead and used the corner of the duvet to wipe his tear-wet face free of the salty residue. “It’s over now, Sunshine, you’re safe. Now listen,” I instructed gently but sternly, settling him back into the crook of my arm, “You need to know about some of the shit that’s been going on. Are you listening?” Justin nodded and picked up my hand again, holding it tightly in both of his. “Debbie is in on all of this; I talked to her on the phone while you were asleep. I told her yesterday I was going to get you from Ethan, and she was waiting up to hear what happened. She wanted to send Carl Horvath with me, but I knew you’d freak out if I brought the police.” “Deb knows?” Justin asked, looking alarmed. “About…everything?” “She didn’t until last week,” I admitted. “Not until I told her I thought you were being abused. I told her not to say anything to anyone until we knew for sure, but she was really fucking worried about you.” To my immense relief, Justin didn’t ask the question I’d been dreading; ‘how long had you known?’ I just couldn’t face telling him I’d been letting him suffer far longer than he needed to. I’d have to tell him eventually, but I couldn’t now, not yet. “I told her everything that happened last night. She was livid enough to call Horvath at fucking 3am to bully him into paying Ethan a little visit this morning. I guess Carl doesn’t usually work on Saturdays, but you know how insistent Deb can be, especially when she’s spitting acid all over the place.” “You’re not going to go with them, are you?” Justin asked, suddenly looking terrified, “I don’t…I don’t want to go back there.” “Shh, it’s Ok,” I assured him, freeing my hand and sliding it under his shirt to lay it his chest again. “You’re not going, and I’m not going to leave you. We’re going to let Pittsburgh’s finest handle this one. When things have sorted themselves out, we can go pick up your stuff from that shithole of an apartment.” “Ok.” Justin replied quietly. He looked as if he was inwardly struggling with something, and I rubbed his chest soothingly to try and put him at ease. At last, he put a hand out to my face laid it on the side of my neck. “Brian…” “Yeah?” “Brian, I…I missed you.” Justin was looking up into my eyes with a look so heartbreaking I felt a lump rising in my throat. If he only knew how much I’d missed him… “I used to dream about you all the time.” Justin continued, his voice warbling a little, his fingers caressing the hairs at the nape of my neck, “I used to imagine it was you in bed with me and not Ethan. And when I woke up and found it wasn’t true, it hurt so much I wanted to die. It was worse than anything Ethan could have done to me.” I could tell this was impossibly hard for him, but I didn’t interrupt. Justin had paused again, looking away from me, averting his eyes for a second before returning his pleading, penetrating gaze on me. “Will you take me back?” Swallowing with difficultly the emotion welling up inside me, I bent down to Justin pressed my lips to his mouth in a long, sensual, drawn out kiss. A kiss of forgiveness and acceptance and desire and need; a kiss to let him know I loved him still and always would. After a long while I pulled back and gently wiped the tears from Justin’s face with my fingertips. I brushed his damp saffron gold hair back off his forehead and laid a tender kiss on his brow. “I don’t have to take you back, Sunshine. I never let you go.” ~~~ Thirty minutes later “Where did those come from?” Justin had just towelled himself off after coming out of the shower, carefully avoiding touching his knee, which looked no better than it had last night. I’d found him a pair of my sweatpants and a sweater to wear, and he was about to struggle into them when I spoke. I’d just been heading into the bathroom to take my shower, when I’d noticed a dark patch just above Justin’s hip. I’d gone over to him and turned him bodily into light, ignoring his protests that ‘it was nothing’. I’d felt my heart start to sink. There were a multitude of small, dark bruises all along the top of Justin’s hips and on the small of his back. Despite my inquiry, I knew exactly where they’d come from; I’d left these kinds of bruises on Justin’s body myself, but never so many and never so severe. They were fingerprints; marks of repeated rough handling. There were more bruises, larger and darker, on his buttocks and the back of his legs. I heard my breath hitch when I caught sight of the inside of his thighs; there were multiple criss-crossing welts like whip-lashes across the whole expanse of his sensitive pale skin, some of which were still healing. I took Justin by the shoulders and looked straight into his eyes, letting my expression ask the question for me. Justin looked humiliated and brought the towel around him to cover the damning evidence, but the damage was done. “Ethan always wanted it rough. He was sorta into the BDSM stuff.” He said softly, looking away from me. “It was hot…sometimes. But I didn’t…really like it.” “You fucking hated it!” I corrected almost violently, “You liked the odd spanking now and them- you’d even let me tie you up sometimes- but you hated all that kinky shit…What was this, a flogger? And on your ass? That had to of be a paddle- how hard did he fucking hit you leave bruises like this? Did he used to tie you down and make you beg for it?” “Brain, don’t, please!” Justin pleaded, on the verge of tears. “I didn’t like it…I hated it. But I had to, I had to. Ethan, he…he…” I reached out and pulled Justin’s body against mine, holding onto him fiercely and cutting off his words. I didn’t need to hear it to know what damage Chin-rat had done. I wished I’d fucking killed Ethan; I wished I had beaten him into a pulp and left him there to die. I may have gone to jail for the rest on my life, but at least I would die a happy man. At least now we could get the fucker for sexual assault as well as abuse. Justin’s whimper brought me back from my seething rage, and I realized I was squeezing him tightly enough to hurt him. I loosened my grip, but didn’t let go. I could feel him shaking again and I chastised myself again for being so brutal. I took his face in my hands, my fingers closing around the back of his neck. He put his hands up and held onto my wrists, looking back at me his eyes full of trust and dependence and need. I stroked his cheekbones gently with my thumbs. “No more secrets, Sunshine,” I told him softly. “You don’t have to hide anything anymore. You’re not alone now; I’m gonna help you. Just promise me you won’t keep things from me anymore, OK?” “OK,” Justin agreed softly, his voice breaking. I rested my forehead against his and we remained like that, as if in a tableau, for a ling time. Finally, I pulled away gently and began to move towards the shower, but Justin held onto my hand. “Can I go in with you? I think you’re the only one who can wash Ethan off me for good.” I smiled slightly and pulled him into the washroom behind me.