WARNINGS: Character insight; Brian. Spoilers for the end of season one and through season two regarding Justin and Brian's relationship. Kind of sappy in the end; I apologize. Also beware of the occasional swear word and drug reference.


BROKEN SUN

The sunshine splintered, broke, shattered. Disappeared. In that instant, as his name tore from my lips- Justin!- his attacker swung. My feet couldn't hit the pavement fast enough, hard enough. The crack of that wooden bat against his skull stopped my heart.

That bastard didn't even look guilty. I barely registered Justin hitting the ground; the burning rage and agony was too strong. He turned and looked at me, having heard my shout, and he ran. As if I'd let him. I grabbed the bat he'd dropped and reeled my arm back. But a split second before I hit him- I won't be like him- the bat changed course and hit his knee instead. He deserved to have that bat swung at his face. He deserved to have it shoved up his ass, to have his ribs broken, to have his teeth knocked out of his fucking skull. But I wasn't like him.

I turned, leaving him swearing and writhing on the ground. Everything slowed. Tunneled. The sunshine was there; cracked and destroyed. It wasn't bleeding rays of light like it should. That smile I had just seen not a minute ago was gone. There were no beams of sunlight. Not anymore.

"You will always be young and you will always be beautiful." But where was the beauty in this? Justin was on the ground, not moving. He wasn't clutching his head or yelling or in pain. He wasn't moving. This wasn't right, this wasn't supposed to happen. This kind of shit didn't happen to me. "You're Brian Kenney for fuck's sake!" The people I cared about did not get hurt. That was for the people in the newspaper or who provoked those damn heterosexual homophobes with stupid stunts. My friends were not like that and did not deserve this.

"No." The word spilled from my lips. When had I kneeled on the ground? When had I even made it over to the limp boy? "No, no, no, no, no." There was too much blood. It was everywhere- running down his face and on the ground and on the scarf I had draped around his neck not just a few moments ago. It seemed like years ago thinking about it. I picked the sunshine up; it slipped through my fingers. Justin didn't move. He just bled. And bled and bled.

"God!"

It was all numb, a blur. The call, the boys in blue uniforms, the ambulance, the ride. They used words I didn't like; cerebral cortex, major blood loss, blood transfusion, drill, nerves, what the fuck was a hypothalamus? They took off the scarf to put on a neck brace. I put it the garment on automatically, some of the cold blood smearing on my neck. There were tubes and machines and wires everywhere; a heavy oxygen tank resting between blanket-covered legs. There was a hose attached to that, a mask attached to the hose, and the mask over his nose and mouth. This wasn't real, it really wasn't. This stuff only happened in movies. This shit only happened to people that I didn't know! Because my friends did not get hurt.

Where were they taking him? I followed them as they wheeled him out of the back of the ambulance. Rushing down the hall, people shouting and ordering and running around. I couldn't be in the room. A chair found me.

Footsteps down an empty hall. I didn't look fabulous; dirty and bloody with wet cheeks. But it was Michael, and he had seen me a mess before, so it was okay. He sat next to me, petted my neck, but didn't say anything. Didn't ask if he was alright.

I couldn't have spoken even if he had.

The nightmare never ended. Michael left to go with David to fucking Portland. Justin stayed in his coma for two weeks. Everyone looked at me with the same eyes- Mel and Linds, Emmet and Ted, even Jennifer- but nobody said anything. There was an empty ache in my chest. I felt like a stranger in that sterile hospital room. Beeping monitors and wires and drugs that controlled your heart, stomach, bladder, everything. It was so different than Babylon. Dancing men and that thumpa-thumpa music and drugs that made you feel like you were on clouds. I hated it there in that strange room. But I hated that he wasn't awake even more.

When he did wake up, though, I fled. If my heart really had stopped that night it startled to life the moment he opened those blue eyes and took his own breath. With it came a barrage of feelings I didn't want. I didn't want to think about them, didn't want to relive that moment, didn't want anything to do with it. It was my fault, okay? I knew that, I knew that. And the truth felt to bad I wanted to die.

I drowned instead. Ecstacy, marijuana, alcohol, LSD; anything I could get my hands on. I existed in a stupor- dancing and fucking and being sucked off and feeling high but not really living. Even though I was with all those men I don't remember getting off once. But then again, I don't remember a lot of things from then.

Hospitals never close. I know- I was there every night. Watching him toss and turn, his nightmares clutching him by the balls and dragging them through their darkened world. The nurse would always suggest I see him during the day. Like I could face him after what happened. I always ignored her and attempted to smoke, but the bitch wouldn't let me. Who made up the stupid rule you couldn't smoke in hospitals?

Michael came back. Ragging me, demanding things, wanting to know why I didn't go and see Justin, accusing me of not caring. He was my best friend, but he could be such a twat sometimes. I pushed him away, avoided him. I hadn't answered his emails for a month, but Michael was just that dense sometimes. Deep down, his concern was touching. But why didn't he understand that I wanted to be alone? Everyone else did. But that was just it- Mikey knew everyone else would leave me alone and that he'd be the only one I'd ever explode at, accidentally revealing my feelings. He knew that he could get me out of my drug-induced stupor if only he tried hard enough.

Try he did. But before he could get very far, Justin appeared. Out of the hospital suddenly and looking alone and terribly lost in Woody's, where Mikey had just saved him from all the pushy fags who had seen him on the news. He looked at me with those blue eyes and a vulnerable expression that I hadn't seen since the night I first took him home with me.

I couldn't breath. "Well are you just going to fucking stand there?" I turned, trying to collect myself. Avoiding Michael's angered question. Why was he here? He shouldn't be here. He was in rehab. Why did he want to see me? It was my fault he got hurt. Almost died.

Things snowballed. He couldn't remember anything. I remembered everything. He couldn't draw anymore; he could barely throw a fucking waffle ball. I was helping him, but Jennifer didn't want me to see him anymore. "You're the reason he got hurt in the first place." Then he was screaming at my door, wondering why I was pushing him out of my life, and then Jennifer was back again, asking me to take her son. After a month of nothing, suddenly everything was happening and I could barely keep up with it all.

I talked to a shrink- a fucking shrink- and he told me some bullshit that I actually followed. But even though Daphne and I tried to relive the ridiculously romantic moment I had created for the sunshine that had forced his way into my life, he didn't remember. Not even when I took him to the parking lot where the bashing had happened.

"Christ!" It ripped from my throat. A raw and ragged sound. "Don't you-" A smaller one, this one more weak. Pathetic. "Don't you remember anything?"

He walked over to me. Grabbed the back of my neck. It was a comforting motion for me; I often wondered if Michael told him about it, or if he just learned it on his own. The latter seemed a far more likely. "I'm sorry. I wish I could remember."

I couldn't meet his eyes. "I wish I could forget."

A clumsy swing with a plastic yellow bat in the hands of my son was all it took. He was gasping, blinking, flinching. He looked like he couldn't get enough air in, like there was something squeezing the life from his heart. He looked like he was being attacked all over again.

I clutched him tight. After a moment he clung to me, still shaking and blinking. If I had known that he would remember like this, I wouldn't have wanted him to ever recall it.

Mel and Linds understood when I cut out of Gus' birthday party to take him home. He fell asleep to my hand running along his back, sideways on my blue bed, the pillow bunched under his head and the blanket clutched in his left hand; his non-injured one. I committed myself to a drink.

A few hours later he woke up. I put the bottle away and turned off the lights, joining him on the bed.

"You really freaked me out there, you know."

"You?" he asked, incredulous.

Hell, my heart was on my sleeve already. "It was like you got hit all over again."

"I remember walking away," he said slowly. "And I turned when you shouted my name, trying to warn me." Justin!

I looked away.

"You didn't tell me about that."

"Guess I forgot." I was lying. We both knew it.

He scooted closer to me. The blue light above the bed accented his eyes, making them shine a little. "I want you inside me." A tentative whisper that made my heart stir.

"Are you sure?"

He paused. "Just... take it easy, okay?"

"Like the first time?"

Justin's slight smile answered everything. His hand- the left one- drifted up to push aside the collar of my shirt. He paused when his hand hit silk.

Oh. I had been wearing it so long I forgot all about it. My sunshine, all stitched and bandaged but healing, pulled on the scarf that I had worn under my shirts for a month. I ducked my head a little, letting it slide right out. He stared at it, all splattered dry blood and wrinkled, before glancing up at me. The confusion at this sympathetic adorning radiating from his eyes. I just stared back at him, opening myself up to him without words. I couldn't hide anything from him anyway.

He kissed me and let it drop to the floor. I kissed him back and we stroked each other's lean bodies, each realizing that all we could do now was move forward.