Dancing to “YMCA” with my boyfriend and the other men in the club made me feel about as gay as anything else I’d done in the last few days. Any hesitations that I might have had about being seen on a date with a man were gone. It felt great to be free of the weight that I didn’t even know I’d been carrying around.

After the song finished, I wanted to dance to another, but Evan said he needed a smoke. I hated that he smoked, but I wasn’t going to be that guy.

The two of us walked to the back door hand-in-hand, but our laughter was cut short when we made our way outside and saw who was leaning against the wall on the other side of the alley.

“Trey!” Evan screamed, rushing toward Trey.

Trey flinched away, but not before I saw the blood streaming down his face from a cut above his eye. He was still on his feet, though. That was a good sign.

While Evan tried to persuade Trey to let him see his injuries, I took a second to scan the alley to make sure whoever had committed the crime wasn’t hiding out waiting to finish what they’d started.

After the conversation about the crime spree we’d had inside the club, and the two guys who’d disappeared on O’Brian, it was impossible not to see Trey’s beating as a targeted attack.

If they even think about touching Evan…

Other than us, though, the alley was empty. Something felt wrong about that. I’d seen plenty of beatings during my time on the force. Most of them were between rival gangs or drug deals gone bad, but the victim never walked away with just one cut to show for it.

Heading back to Trey and Evan, I tried to get control of the situation. They were both crying. Trey looked mostly pissed and almost embarrassed that we were seeing him in such a condition.

Evan, on the other hand, was showing some signs of shock. His eyes were wide and his breathing quick and shallow. His efforts to clean Trey’s face had resulted mostly in smooshing the blood around.

Taking both of Evan’s hands in mine and making sure he was looking me in the eyes rather than off into space, I calmly said, “Evan, I need you to do me a favor. I need you to make a phone call. Call 9-1-1 and tell them what happened. Do you think you can do that?”

“I don’t need no fucking cops,” Trey said. Glaring at me, he added, “None of them. Dig?”

Understanding why a black, gay man would hate cops didn’t make me an angel. It still hurt whenever I saw how little some people trusted me just because of my job. “Sure, tough guy. I get you. Thing is, there was a crime here, and I’m going to make sure it gets reported. This is bigger than just you. We’ve already had one gay man die around here.” I glanced at Evan. He was fumbling with his phone, still trying to dial the number with his shaking hands. “I’m going to make sure there isn’t another.”

Trey laughed. “Sure, Officer. You go ahead and try to crack that case. Chase that trail up whatever trees you want. Just don’t walk too far out on those limbs because,” he paused long enough to look up and down my body and lick his lips, “you’re a solid man who might just break that branch and the problem might be at the trunk.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?” I shouted, wondering if Trey had a concussion.

Evan waved at us to shut up. He’d finally managed to get through to someone. He nodded several times as if the person on the other end could see him before he finally managed to say, “Okay. One sec.”

He wobbled unsteadily.

I worried that he was about to pass out, but he took a deep breath and said, “I’d like to report a… Well, that we need an ambulance, I guess. My friend was beaten. Hate crime. My boyfriend says to send cops. He’s one himself. You might know him. James? He’s a great guy—” He nodded as the operator cut him off. “Yes. Sorry. One, ma’am. Lots of cuts.” He looked closely at Trey. “Actually, just one cut. Trey, you going to be okay?”

I breathed out a sigh of relief as Evan seemed to be pulling himself back together.

Trey was looking at his face in the mirror on some makeup compact thing that he must have carried in a pocket. “Those motherfuckers busted my eye, that’s all. It’ll swell shut, but that’s why God gave us two, right? Still think I’m pretty, copper?”

I swatted Trey’s hand away when he reached for my chest.

“Stop it,” Evan snapped at me as he slid his phone into the pouch pocket on his hoodie. “Trey got hurt, James.”

“You’re yelling at me? He’s the one who—”

Evan motioned for me to shut up. Using the sleeve of his hoodie, Evan was able to clean Trey’s face much more successfully. His free hand rubbed Trey’s arm, comfortingly.

I continued being useless and growing frustrated. I was the cop. I was supposed to keep things like this from happening. Instead I’d been inside dancing with Evan and having a good time while an innocent man was being beaten just a few feet away.

We needed to get to the bottom of this and arrest whoever was committing these crimes against the gay men of the city. I needed to make sure the chief understood how serious this was.

Shocked at realizing what it felt like to belong to the group needing the help for the first time ever, I suddenly understood why guys like Trey treated me the way they sometimes did.

Trey looked ready to yell something else at me again, but the sound of the police-car siren interrupted him.

“Sooey!” Trey shouted at the two officers as they stepped out of the car. “I think you guys have the wrong alley. I heard the free donuts were a block that way.” He pointed with his middle finger.

“Hey, O’Brian. Franklin.” I shook their hands. “I think everything’s okay here. The perp is gone. Trey, did you see anything useful while you were getting beaten up? Like hair color, skin color, T-shirt logo?”

Trey seemed to have decided to stare at O’Brian to see if he could get him to flinch. O’Brian was not backing down one bit, though, which was out of character for O’Brian who was usually fairly gentle with even the worst of suspects, and even nicer to the victims.

“No, see, the thing is I was out here peeing because the john inside was full.”

I hadn’t seen Trey inside the club since we’d arrived. I made a mental note to talk to the guys in the club to see if they’d seen him at all, but didn’t say anything out loud. Trey clearly wasn’t going to say anything useful on purpose, but sometimes little things slipped out if guys like Trey talked long enough.

“I was peeing so long that I got tired and closed my eyes and then bam!” Evan flinched when Trey shouted that last word. “The bastard snuck up and clocked me.”

He shook his head and went silent.

“You need to learn some manners,” I told Trey, pissed off because he was being such a jackass. “We’re the ones that will find the asshole. And talking about cops like that isn’t going to do anything to help, man. Just tell us what you know so we can have a better chance of stopping these attacks.”

Trey smiled and zipped his lips. “My momma always said that if you don’t have anything nice to say, you’re probably talking to a cop.”

I didn’t know how to reply to that.

The other cops shifted in annoyance, and O’Brian said. “We’ll file a report to get this logged, James, but don’t hold your breath. Especially if the victim himself isn’t going to talk to us.”

“Yeah, gotcha.” I frowned at Trey, who was already walking back toward the street, and added, “Log the time and location and hope someone else calls in something useful, I guess.”

Trey flipped us off one last time before disappearing around the corner.

O’Brian grunted and turned his attention back to me. “Fun guy. Anyway, want to help us out with some of that paperwork by answering some questions?”

“Sure. Fire away.”

Franklin asked, “Who was the victim?”

“Trey.”

“Last name?”

I looked at Evan and raised my eyebrows.

He shrugged. “Just Trey. Like Cher and Madonna.”

Franklin snorted, but wrote the name in a notepad. “Did you see anybody else?”

“No,” I said. “I checked, but there was no one but Trey when we came out.”

“Where were you right beforehand? And how’d you end up in this alley?”

“Inside. Dancing.” I blushed realizing how quickly we were heading into my own personal life. “Evan wanted to smoke, so we came outside.” They knew I didn’t smoke, but I didn’t offer any explanation about why I’d come out, too. Questions from cops had never made me so uncomfortable.

O’Brian did push the subject.

“Did you call in the incident right away, and is there any witness to confirm all that?”

I bristled at being treated like a suspect. “What the hell is going on here? What aren’t you guys telling me?”

The two of them looked at each other, and then Franklin said, “We’ve heard some rumors about this alley. Drug deals. Trey is probably mixed up in it. We don’t know your friend at all, so we we just need to cover our bases. Besides, you’re practically a regular here, right?”

“Are you fucking kidding me?” I yelled at O’Brian. I wanted to smash his face for outing me without my permission, but knew it wasn’t the time or place. “I answered all your questions. Go do some fucking police work.”

“Trey isn’t a dealer,” Evan said, his voice growing louder. “He’s strange, but he isn’t involved in any of this. He was a victim here tonight.”

I stepped away from the two idiots with my hands clenched into fists, and walked past Evan, who turned and followed me. Just inside the club, I stopped and turned back to Evan. Any thoughts of it being a coincidence that the gay men of the city kept ending up beaten or worse were gone. “I need to talk to Trey and find out what he knows. You and I know that these are all hate crimes. We gotta get this shit figured out fast.” I nodded toward the door. “They’ll…I mean, we’ll do our best, but with staffing levels the way they are it’s hard enough to get our jobs done most days. It’ll be hard to make it as urgent of a priority as it should be without more victims, if you know what I mean.” Looking closely at Evan, I added, “I don’t want any more victims.”

I felt like shit talking about my fellow policemen that way, but they’d asked for it with the shitty way they’d treated me. It felt like they were saying that because I’d slept with another man, I wasn’t one of them anymore.

Screw O’Brian and his big fucking mouth for spreading the news.

Frustrated at not being able to do anything, I kicked the wall. Unsolved crimes were nothing new. But not understanding what was happening, and knowing that my lack of knowledge meant that Evan would be at risk each time he went to work made my blood boil.

If only Trey would talk.

I kicked the wall again. “Trey’s such an asshole.”

“Relax, James. He was attacked and is scared. He might not show it, but he can be vulnerable just like anyone else. He didn’t mean anything by it, I’m sure. Trey’s one of the good guys even if he might not seem it at times. Whenever some new guy ends up on the streets because his family kicked him out or he lost his job or whatever, Trey always helps him get back upon his feet. Just let it go. For me.”

The intensity in Evan’s voice surprised me. Trey had clearly made an impression on him. If Evan trusted him, I told myself that I should give Trey some benefit of the doubt. I nodded and pulled Evan in for a hug. “Okay,” I agreed. “No fighting.”

Evan reached up and patted my cheek to let his hand trail down over my chest. His gentle touch snapped what was left of my anger, leaving me with a ton of unused adrenaline.

With a big exhale of air, I looked him in the eyes.

He smiled and said. “I agree to one thing, though. Trey has to know something. But he isn’t going to tell you. In his mind, you’re one of them. Let me talk to him alone and see what I can find out. He’ll be more chatty off the record.”

“So we’re in this together?” I asked wrapping my arms around the small of his back and pulling him against my body.

He ground himself against my crotch. “I’m not going anywhere. I’m horny as hell, though. I know I shouldn’t be right now, but I don’t want to go back in there and talk to them tonight. There’s nothing they can do.” Sliding his hand up inside my shirt and rubbing it against my bare skin until he reached my nipple and gave it a little pinch, he finally said, “I just want you, right now. Take me home and keep me safe.”

I nodded, but playfully asked, “Keep you safe? Or fuck you?”

With a devilish smile, he said, “Both.”

Rather than risking the guys trying to get us back on the dance floor, we escaped out the back door again and hurried away from the club.