D/C: Queer as Folk is NOT mine though i love it as my own and would happily go to court and fight for custordy! =D

Brian looked up at the ceiling in the darkened loft. The blue lights above his bed had always bathed the room in an eerie, cold haze but somehow, tonight, it was colder. He thought back to how it had all began, just a one night stand with a guy who looked hot under a street light. That was the night everything had changed forever, over the year he'd been pissed at the kid, grown fond of the kid and now…. Well, now he didn't know how to feel because all that was inside him was a numb, empty space. He felt like he didn't know anything anymore. He'd never cried as much as he had that evening and now he just felt weak and exhausted and blank. He wasn't thinking anything, he wasn't feeling anything, he may as well have been an inanimate object but, through all the numbness and the nothingness, there was a distinct feeling of guilt and pain.

He thought back to that last kiss by the jeep. If he'd known it was going to be the last one he'd ever share with the kid, he'd have made it special. He'd have made it count but what would have been the point? It's not as though Justin would ever remember it. It's not as though Justin would ever even know he existed. He blinked away the sharp sting that had built up in his eye. Surely, there weren't anymore tears to cry. He couldn't believe this had happened. He felt like he'd been on the emotional rollercoaster of his life in this past week and now it was over. The ride had finished and he was left feeling a little sick and dizzy with the force of it all.

He closed his eyes but he couldn't keep them closed for long. Every time he shut his mind off, it would immediately take him back to that car park. He'd see Justin walk away from him. He'd see Chris step out of the shadows. The bat would swing and then …. Brian's eyes shot open and he went back to staring at the ceiling. He could still hear the voices of the paramedics "step away Mr Kinney, there's nothing you can do for him now. Let the doctors do their jobs." He could hear the doctor, "we're not very optimistic." He could hear the bleeping of machinery, the nurses offering menial, bullshit words of so-called comfort as though anything could comfort him in this situation and he could hear that stupid fucking doctor, "I'm sorry Mr Kinney, it's obvious you care about him but we can only disclose the state of the patient with a member of his immediate family."

Three fucking days he'd waited. He'd barely eaten, he'd hardly breathed. It was like he'd forgotten that a world continued outside that hospital as someone he cared about led, seemingly lifeless, in a bed being kept alive by a whole load of wires. It was all his fucking fault. When the doctor finally announced that Justin was going to live, Brian had been so relieved as a whole world of stress disappeared from him, that he barely registered the doctors warning that "he may have some kind of memory loss but we won't know the extent of it until he wakes up."

The hospital kept Justin in a coma for the rest of the week and Brian came to see Justin everyday and he was there when those beautiful blue eyes finally flickered open slowly. Justin's brow creased as he looked around at the strange hospital room. He blinked once and took another look, still frowning and then he spotted Brian stood a yard away looking at him with an amazed, relieved expression on his face.

"Justin," Brian whispered, reaching out a hand tentatively to touch Justin's hand. Justin flinched away terrified and Brian just looked a little hurt. "It's okay," Brian said, "it's just me."

Justin didn't look placated by this information, if anything he looked more uncomfortable.

"Look, I'm sure you blame me and I wouldn't blame you for that. I know it's my fault but I…"

"What?" Justin interrupted, confusion obvious in his eyes. "What's your fault? Are you the reason I'm in hospital? What did you do to me?"

"Er," Brian stalled, not sure which of those questions to answer first. "How much do you remember?" He question eventually. "Do you remember any of the prom?"

"Prom?" Justin raised an eyebrow completely confused. "The proms only for the students who've finished their final year."

"Well, yeah but…" and then it hit Brian like a ton of bricks. Justin's memory loss was more extensive than he'd expected but did that mean …. Brian stopped his thoughts and looked carefully at the kid ahead of him. "How old are you?" He asked, feeling like he was right back there on the night they met.

"Seventeen," Justin answered warily.

"What year are you in at school?"

"I've just started the twelfth grade."

Brian felt sick, he knew what that meant but he had to be sure, so he took a deep breath; "do you know who I am?"

"Apparently, you're the man responsible for me being in here."

Brian just nodded slowly. "Right," he whispered. "Er, sorry for disturbing you. Don't worry. You won't see me again."

Justin frowned but he didn't say anything as the man with no name left his room. As soon as he was on his own, he began to panic. The last thing he remembered was going to sleep fully intending to go to Liberty Avenue the next evening. He'd never been there before but he knew that was the place to go if he wanted to find others like him. If he wanted to fuck and be fucked by the hottest, most beautiful men in Pittsburgh and now he was here, in fucking hospital with some weird guy talking to him like they were long lost friends. Still, the guy had been hot but, at the age of seventeen, wasn't every guy in the world hot to him?

He looked around at the machines and spotted a call nurse button. He was about to push it when the door to his room opened.

"Aha," a brisk-moving doctor announced with a pleased look on his face as he unhooked the clipboard from the end of the bed and read a few things off the sheet. "Justin Taylor, excellent, you're awake."

"Er, yeah," Justin agreed. He wasn't really sure what the procedure was for going to sleep in bed and waking up in a hospital.

"Okay then Justin, just a few questions for you."

The blonde nodded mutedly.

"Right, what is your name?"

"Er, you just said," Justin frowned.

"Humour me," the doctor frowned, it was obvious he just wanted to tick a few boxes and send the kid on his way.

"Justin Taylor," Justin answered.

"Excellent. Er, residing address."

Justin gave his home address and the doctor frowned but scribbled it down anyway before asking, "Justin can you tell me what date it is?"

"2nd December," Justin announced, with no doubt in his mind that he was absolutely right. The doctor frowned again and scribbled something else down on his clipboard.

"And the year?"

"2000"

The doctor nodded a little and produced a flashlight, shining it first into Justin's left eye and then his right eye and noting something else down. "Well," the doctor sighed, hooking the clipboard back over the end of Justin's bed, "it looks like you might be suffering with a little memory loss."

"Memory loss," Justin frowned. "How is that possible?"

The doctor raised an eyebrow. "You really don't remember anything about why you're here?"

Justin shook his head in frustration, why couldn't this man just tell him what was going on? He felt completely in the dark about everything and he was sick of it already. "I'll send a nurse in to explain," the doctor said eventually, "and I should probably contact your mum … and Mr Kinney," he muttered. "That's completely against hospital policy of course but he did pay me to…." The doctor suddenly looked at Justin and snapped his lips together abruptly. "Forget you heard that," he urged suddenly. And then his expression changed to one of curiosity. "Er, Justin, do you remember Mr Kinney?"

"Who?"

"Brian Kinney?"

"What the fuck are you talking about?" The twink asked and the doctor nodded as though understanding something suddenly. It was understandable, of course, that Justin would be frustrated. Without being filled in on the entire story, Justin would just feel like everyone was talking in riddles but it seemed like Justin may have misplaced a year of his life and, if he'd picked up anything from the colourful crowd of visitors to this particular patient, it was that they'd known him less than a year. It seemed to him like Justin may have forgotten everything about his new life. But at least this cleared up Kinney's bizarre closing sentence as he'd left the hospital earlier that day.

"I don't want him to know about me."

The nurse didn't got to Justin's room for another half an hour, by which time, Justin had driven himself half crazy trying to second guess what the seemingly insane doctor was prattling on about but it didn't matter what he'd expected her to say, he hadn't expected that. It seemed Justin had done a lot in a year. He'd come out, got himself a new family on Liberty Avenue, left home because of his homophobic father, moved in with some woman named Debbie, who'd taken him on like an adopted son, scored 1500 on his SATs and got into Dartmouth but his art had improved and he'd chosen PIFA instead. He'd gone to the prom and danced with some guy he'd met on Liberty Avenue, they'd danced in front of everyone and then Chris fucking Hobbs had taken a baseball bat and introduced it to his forehead.

And that was it, the last year of his life, condensed and summed up as best as possible by a couldn't care less nurse and a couldn't care more mother but none of it seemed real. For all he knew, they could have been making it all up entirely. In fact, the more things his mother came out with that had supposedly happened, the more he thought Ashton Kutcher was going to arrive and announce that he'd been Punk'd but that didn't happen. However, the people that were supposedly in his new life didn't arrive either. His mother told them about him all; Debbie, Michael, Emmett, Ted, Mel and Lindsey. His mother had told him that he had adopted them as a new family when his father disowned him but they were just meaningless names to him. None of these 'people' appeared to see him and he had no proof they even existed. He found it impossible to accept that he'd lost an entire year with no recollection whatsoever. It was too far fetched to believe that this whole new cohort of people claimed to love him like part of the family and if that were true, where the hell were they? The only person, other than his mother and Daphne that showed up at the hospital was the man who'd supposedly disowned him; his father, Craig Taylor. It was Craig that really made sense to Justin.

Craig explained things properly. A man, and Justin worked out later it was that man that had been there when he'd woken up, had found him on a street corner whilst Justin minded his own business. He'd forced himself on him as far as possible and it was then, when Justin had realised that maybe he wasn't gay after all but that didn't stop the rumours flying around at school and then Chris had smacked him with a baseball at the prom. Craig admitted that Hobbs' actions had been horrific, however, he told Justin that that other man had provoked the attack, which was why he felt guilty. Justin asked about the other names his mother and Daphne had mentioned, Craig explained that they were just people who'd come out in support of Justin because they were a group of people who stood up to fight against hate crimes.

"So, I'm not gay?" Justin asked. He was aware that his father flinched quite dramatically at the word gay but Craig just drew his lips into a thin line and said sternly.

"No, you've slept with Daphne."

Justin raised an eyebrow. He was completely confused. He'd been so sure in his own mind. It had always been men he'd been ever attracted to ever since he could remember. He couldn't ever remember looking at a woman and finding her anything more that pretty. He'd certainly never wanted to fuck a woman but if his dad was telling the truth, which he was pretty sure he was (why would he lie?) then maybe he had it all wrong. So, Daphne was the love of his life? Well, maybe it was time to follow that up.

"So," his dad said eventually, "the doctors say you can leave if you're feeling up to it. How do you fancy moving in with your dad?"