“I saw him. He was coming after you with a bat. But he was moving too fast, and you were too far away. And I ran… But there was no time to stop it. And then he swung. And it was too late. There was nothing I could do. And then you just laid there on the cold cement.”

*****

On the eve of Brian Kinney and Justin Taylor’s ninth wedding anniversary, Brian went back to his hotel room in Pittsburgh alone. Wondering why this was his life. What he’d done to deserve this. What he’d done to deserve any of the for-shit things that had happened to him so far in his life. Justin was one of the positive things that had happened to him in his life -- one thing on what felt like a very short list. And now that might get taken from him.

He was thinking of all of the plans he’d originally had for the next day. The way he’d wanted to celebrate how much it meant to him to have Justin by his side in this life. Now, their partnership hung in the balance.

And Brian wanted nothing more than to go to a bar and try to drown all of the pain and the hurt he was feeling in a large amount of whiskey, but he knew he shouldn’t. If he was hung over, he couldn’t be fully present for Justin. Besides, the alcohol wouldn’t change a damn thing. He wasn’t sure there was anything that could take away this particular pain. Not alcohol, not pills, nothing.

As he settled into a cold, somewhat uncomfortable bed that wasn’t his own for another lonely night without his partner next to him, Brian’s thoughts kept returning to earlier that afternoon, when he and Michael had gone to pick up what was left of Justin’s paintings. When they’d gone to find his car, to see if the two paintings that hadn’t been at the police station were still in the car. When Brian had finally laid eyes on the physical manifestation of exactly what his husband had gone through on the highway two days before.

What Justin had lived through.

Lived.

Lived, lived, lived.

Brian had to keep reminding himself of that. Justin was still alive. He hadn’t left him yet.

He was being kept in a state of suspended animation at the moment, as a way of protecting his brain from any further injury caused by the swelling. Michael had been right -- they were letting Justin heal. But as soon as he was out of the woods, they’d bring Justin back. They’d told Brian as much, and he believed them. He just had to wait for that. And until then, he just had to keep it together. He hoped he could.

He’d completely lost his goddamn mind when he saw the paintings, mangled and laying in a pile, totally disregarded, in the corner. Like they didn’t mean anything. And to those people, they hadn’t. They’d picked them up off the road and brought them there. At least they’d had the decency to do that much. But that was all they’d done, because to those police officers, the canvases didn’t have the same meaning that they did to Brian.

To Brian, they were a part of Justin. And it hurt to see them like that -- broken. Just as much as it hurt to see Justin lying in the hospital bed in much the same state.

The second he saw them like that, he could feel every bit of the control he’d been trying to exert over the broad range of intense emotions he’d had coursing through his body all day dissolve completely, in an instant. So he’d yelled. Then he’d cried. And there was absolutely nothing he could have done to stop either one of those things.

Nor did either one of them make him feel any better.

Michael tried, but there wasn’t anything he could do to make Brian feel better either.

Honestly, Brian wasn’t sure there was anything that could, at this point, aside from seeing his husband’s beautiful blue eyes, open and alert. But he still didn’t know how far away he was from that. So he couldn’t spend too much of his mental energy thinking about it.

When he’d seen the car, Brian had felt like he’d been sent into another dimension, where everything around him was dulled and distant. He couldn’t hear anything except the pounding of his own blood in his ears. Couldn’t see anything except the dark red stains of two-day-old blood smeared across the previously-gray interior of his car. Couldn’t feel much of anything except intense pain and fear. Like he was spiraling out of control, downward into some depth of despair and panic that he could barely fathom. He felt like he couldn't breathe -- like someone was squeezing his chest in a vice. But he kept breathing. Gasping. Fighting. He’d barely registered that Michael might have been speaking to him, but there was no way he could respond. He couldn’t make his mouth move. Couldn’t push air out to form words. Couldn’t find them in his brain, anyhow. The only thing that broke him out of it was Michael coming to stand between him and the car, blocking his view of the horror. Brian was grateful Michael had done that, because otherwise, he didn’t know just how far down he would have gone.

Michael had reminded him that he needed to get back to Justin. That Justin needed him. He was right.

Brian couldn’t do this right now. He couldn’t lose it. He couldn’t break. Couldn’t allow himself to get consumed by the memories.

Because Justin needed him. And Justin needed him whole. Fully present. Strong and ready for anything.

Brian didn’t feel like he was any of those things. But he’d have to fake it, and hope he would make it. There really wasn’t any other option.

Daphne had showed up at the hospital in the late afternoon, and Brian could tell that the scene was all too familiar to her as well. Brian hadn’t seen her in a while, because her job kept her very busy almost all the time, but he knew that she and Justin still talked on the phone regularly. Brian wasn’t sure how she’d found out about Justin’s situation, but he was thankful that he hadn’t had to be the one to keep people updated on what was going on. He didn’t think he could do it. He still hadn’t actually looked at his text messages since he’d been in Rochester -- and as the number of notifications climbed, the idea felt more and more overwhelming. So he just kept ignoring them, figuring that if someone really had something important to say, they’d call.

She had immediately given him a hug, and they’d shared a look that said more than words ever could. A look that told him she understood, completely. They were Justin’s people. They always had been. They had been 15 years ago, and they would be again now.

Sure, Justin had Jennifer and Debbie, his two mothers, but Brian and Daphne were different. To both of them, Justin felt like a part of them -- like they were two halves of the same whole.

And Daphne had been almost as concerned with Brian as she was with Justin. Asking him how he was doing. If he was taking care of himself. If he needed anything.

Brian was doing the best he could, and that was about all he could say about that.

He’d struggled with spasms off and on all day, likely because he was so stressed out and his body was reacting to that. He knew he hadn’t had enough to drink or eat for three days now, but he honestly didn’t think he could stomach any more than he’d had. By the time he’d made it back to the hotel room and into the shower, he was ready to take enough painkillers to knock himself out for at least 12 or so hours, but he couldn’t do that because then he would oversleep, again, and miss out on time he could have spent with Justin. So he’d just have to deal with it.

And he knew people meant well, but he really wished they’d stop hovering.

He felt the familiar, irritating ache in his lower back as he used his upper body strength to roll himself over onto his stomach, then reached up to turn the light off. He closed his eyes and tried to will sleep to come quickly.

That night, he had the first bashing-related nightmare he’d had in well over a decade.

Fifteen years before, the nightmares had not only plagued Justin, but Brian as well. Once Justin had come to live with Brian, though, Brian had told himself that he had to ignore them and just keep going, because Justin needed him. Brian didn’t have time to deal with his own shit. Justin was more important. That seemed to work pretty well. It wasn’t long before his own nightmares stopped, and Brian slept fairly soundly again, save for when Justin would wake him up flailing and whimpering in the wee hours of the morning.

This one, though, was more vivid than any he could remember having before.

The predominant color was red -- blood red. Everywhere. Everything was stained red, and every surface was either coated or dripping with the viscous, red liquid. Brian was in his Jeep, watching Justin walk away in his prom tuxedo in the side mirror, thinking about the fact that he just might love the kid. Then, he saw Chris Hobbs stalking Justin from behind, clutching a baseball bat. It was a familiar scene, and Brian knew what step came next -- only this time, he couldn’t get out of the car, couldn’t run, couldn’t warn Justin, because the doors were locked, or jammed, or something. The door wouldn’t open, and it wouldn’t unlock. He was powerless, just watching the horror unfold in the side view mirror. Chris Hobbs swinging the bat, hitting Justin in the head. Justin falling to the ground. Chris Hobbs continuing to beat Justin after he fell, until Brian was sure Justin was dead. Brian was screaming -- begging Chris to stop -- but it seemed like no one could hear him. And there was so much blood. Even more blood than there had been at the beginning. It was filling the garage now, the level rising like a flood, until it was up to the windows on the Jeep and it started to pour in, coating Brian in its stickiness, as the sickening smell of iron filled his nostrils. It continued to rise until it reached his chin and started to fill his mouth, and the smell was replaced by taste, which made him sputter and cough and gag as he screamed and hoped that someone would hear him -- that someone would listen.

He woke up in a cold sweat, his throat hoarse. Apparently he really had been screaming. Shit. He looked at his hands and his body, sure that they’d be coated in blood, but they weren’t. He was wearing the same pair of sweatpants he’d worn to bed, and they were clean. Michael had washed them for him. He wasn’t in the Jeep. He wasn’t in the parking garage. He was in bed, in a hotel room in downtown Pittsburgh. And Justin was lying in a coma, but he wasn’t dead.

Someone would have called Brian if he was, right? If something had happened?

Yes, he told himself as he tried to calm his heart rate and slow his breathing. Someone would have called.

He checked his phone on compulsion. Nobody had called.

He unlocked it just to be absolutely sure there were no missed calls. No notification bubbles on the phone icon. Just 38 unread text messages next to it. All messages that Brian couldn’t bring himself to read or reply to. Probably a bunch of people checking on him, being sure he was okay. Hovering.

He was okay. Wasn’t he?

It took Brian almost an hour to calm down enough to fall asleep again. This time, he was treated to an entirely different set of disturbing images from a different time.

He was watching a car speed down the highway -- his car -- but he wasn’t in it. Justin was in it. It was dark, and it was snowing. Then the whole scene changed, and suddenly there was a crash. The world seemed to tilt on its axis, and Brian could see Justin go from animated and happy and smiling to bleeding and unconscious in the blink of an eye. He watched the whole thing unfold in horror. He wanted to run to Justin, but he realized he couldn’t feel his legs. It felt like he was standing on the side of the road -- he looked down and he wasn’t in his wheelchair -- but he couldn’t move. He couldn’t walk. His entire lower body was numb. All he could do was scream and beg people to help, but no one was stopping. Again, no one was listening. And blood was pouring out of the car, spreading across the highway. The cars kept speeding by, driving through it like it was nothing more than a rain puddle. But Brian could see that it was blood. Couldn’t they? His screams turned into sobs as he watched Justin bleed out in his car, alone. His blood covered the road, but no one seemed to care. And Brian wanted so desperately to reach him, to touch him, to comfort him and hold his hand, but he couldn’t move. He was paralyzed. And that kept him stuck.

This time, Brian woke up and his face was wet. He put his hand to it and then drew it away to look at it, half expecting the wetness to be blood. But it wasn’t. It was clear. It was tears, because he’d been crying. And his hand was shaking. His heart was pounding in his chest again.

Christ, what was wrong with him?

He felt like he had to piss this time too, so he rolled over and sat up, pushing his legs over the side of the bed like they’d done something wrong, because in that dream, they had. They’d kept him from Justin. He took care of business in the bathroom, thinking it was odd that he was having to go in the middle of the night, but whatever. Maybe it was the dream. Maybe he’d had too much to drink too late at night. He’d long ago lost track of whatever his regular routine was, because his whole fucking life felt like it was upside down.

He washed his face again, taking a long look at it in the mirror. Not really liking what he saw. But it didn’t much matter anymore. It’s not like he was going to be out at Babylon trying to pick up tricks. He was only going to be seeing a handful of people, and none of them were going to care about what he looked like.

Brian went back into the main part of the hotel room and transferred back to the bed, trying to ignore the ache in his left shoulder. The gift that life had apparently given him so he could always remember trying to cruise guys no-handed on the Liberty Ride. Now that he was using his shoulders for every damn thing, he was reminded of his moment of stupidity quite often.

He flipped himself back over and turned out the light again, and hoped that the third time was the charm.

It wasn’t.

This time, he was the one driving the car. Only it was the Corvette. And he was alone. It was raining. He was thinking about how much he missed Justin -- how letting go of the mansion had felt like letting go of any hope that Justin was going to come back to him. Letting go of Justin once and for all because he knew he needed to, so Justin could be the best artist and the best man he could possibly be, without being weighed down by Brian and all of his emotional and relationship baggage. He was late for a meeting, because the closing had run longer than expected. So he was in a hurry. This was the part he remembered.

From there on, everything was new to Brian. Or at least, it felt like it was.

He went around a curve a little too fast, and he could feel the back tires losing traction a little, starting to slide. He tried to steer into it, but overcorrected. One of the trees on the side of the road got closer and closer. Brian felt like he was watching the scene in slow motion as the car skidded off the road, then suddenly time resumed its normal cadence at the second the car slammed into the tree, and Brian’s body slammed into the steering wheel. He instantly felt like he’d been cut in half. He could feel absolutely nothing below his waist, and he actually looked down to see if his body was still there -- still attached. What he could feel was a burning, blinding pain in his back, like someone was pushing a hot poker into it at a very specific point, and the pain radiated outward in pulses. He could feel and hear his heartbeat echoing in his ears. His face felt hot, and he was lightheaded, and weak -- like the intense pain was sucking every bit of life out of him. He felt something warm and wet running down his face as darkness started to cloud his vision, in waves at first, then slowly fading out like a television show just before the end credits.

Brian awoke with a gasp just as the dream world around him faded to black, and it took him a minute to reorient himself. To realize that he still had the numbness and the feeling like he’d been cut in half, but the intense, blinding pain had been replaced with a dull ache. The same ache that was almost always there in some capacity -- sometimes barely at all, and sometimes distracting enough that it made it difficult to concentrate. He looked over at his wheelchair sitting beside the bed -- the reminder that this wasn’t new. He’d been like this for a while. The wear and tear and the chips in the powdercoat and the scrapes on the pushrims told him that he had. Scars of life. From living his life in that chair.

He didn’t think he remembered most of what he’d just seen. He’d never recalled it before. For ten years, the last thing he could remember was thinking, “Fuck, I’m going to be late for this meeting and Cynthia is going to kill me.” How ironic that he’d nearly died shortly after that, and Cynthia had nothing to do with it.

But now, he’d seen and felt it all. And it felt so real. It felt like he was there. Like he’d traveled back in time somehow.

And he kind of wished he could go back to not remembering how it felt to have his spinal cord crushed.

By now, Brian was a mess -- his heart was pounding again, and his head along with it. He felt like he couldn’t quite catch his breath. He was shaking uncontrollably. And he really, really didn’t want to be alone right now. But there was no way to remedy that. He rolled over onto his side and used his hands to pull his legs up so he could hug them to his chest. He’d always found that comforting, ever since he was a kid. He felt protected and safe when he curled up like that. He tried to imagine that he wasn’t alone -- that Justin was with him. Rubbing his back. Telling him that he was okay. Reminding him that it wasn’t real -- it was only a dream.

Well, maybe that last one wasn’t.

It took Brian a long time to get back to a state where he could even try to go back to sleep.

And once he got to that point, he still couldn’t sleep, because every time he closed his eyes, all he could see was blood. So he lay there awake for the next two hours, until it was finally late enough that he could start getting ready for the day, so he could go back to the hospital and see with his own two eyes that Justin was still there.

This certainly wasn’t what he’d had in mind to celebrate their anniversary. But today, he was choosing to be thankful that Justin was still alive. That he hadn’t bled out in a cold, damp parking garage, or on the side of the highway on a cold, snowy night.

The shower felt really good that morning, because his muscles were sore, either from the stress of the dreams or from all he’d put his body through in the past few days. He was sure his legs would have been sore as well if he could feel them, with as jumpy as they’d been the day before. He tried to be sure he took his time with the passive stretches he was supposed to do every day, which he’d neglected the past couple of days. Doing a little bit extra to try to make up for it.

He sat in the shower for a while, just letting the warm water run over his body. Trying to center himself and pull his mind back to the present moment. It might not have been the best present moment, but it would probably better than dredging up unpleasant memories of the past, or worrying about the future. However, he wasn’t very successful with keeping his thoughts out of the past.

Those dreams had taken Brian straight back to the days and weeks after the bashing, when he’d struggled with an enormous amount of guilt -- feeling directly responsible for what had happened to Justin. At first, it had looked like Justin could lose his life, all because Brian went to his prom and danced with him and kissed him and flaunted his sexuality in the faces of a hundred teenagers, one of whom it turned out felt very threatened by that. Brian had spent three days keeping vigil at the hospital with Michael by his side, hoping that wouldn’t be what happened. And in the end, he’d gotten his wish, and Justin had survived. And Brian had gone home. Back to his life. And he’d managed his pain in the only way he knew how -- drinking, drugs, and fucking.

As the extent of Justin’s injuries had emerged, Brian’s guilt only shifted -- it didn’t go away completely. No, Justin hadn’t died, but his right hand had been basically paralyzed when he first awoke from the coma. It took him weeks of rehab to relearn how to use it for even basic activities of daily living. And he exited rehab without the fine motor skills to hold a pencil. Brian knew all of this because he was there -- he’d been there every night, getting updates from the night nurse, but he didn’t want Justin to know he was there. Brian didn’t want to show his face, no matter how much Justin wanted to see him, because he felt like he’d still taken Justin’s life. Justin could no longer draw, and that had been his passion. His life. And Brian’s actions had led to that being taken from him.

Facing Justin would have meant having to face his guilt, so Brian had chosen to avoid seeing him at all. Then, Justin had appeared at Woody’s one night, and he’d had no choice but to acknowledge Justin and try to push past all of his shit.

He remembered Justin sitting at the bar in his loft, recounting how if he’d been hit a fraction of an inch this way or that way, he’d be a complete vegetable or dead, instead of just having a partially paralyzed right hand. He told Brian how they’d had to drill a hole in his skull to drain the blood. And through all of that, Brian thought he’d be sick. His stomach turned, and his guilt only twisted it further. He didn’t want to hear any of that. It physically pained him to know that Justin went through that, and it was all his fault.

Justin went on telling the story he said he couldn’t remember -- the story that happened to somebody else -- and when Brian couldn’t take it anymore, he interrupted him. But then, before his rational mind could stop him, he picked up telling the story, like it was some kind of compulsion. Something he had to get out. He hadn’t done that yet. He’d gone over it a million times in his head, but he hadn’t said it out loud. Justin listened, and assured Brian that it wasn’t his fault, but Brian didn’t believe him. Brian never believed him. He always held the thought in the back of his mind that if he hadn’t gone to that dance, none of this would have happened to Justin.

That was why he could never bring himself to talk about the horrors Justin had endured. Why it caused him so much pain to try to re-enact the events so Justin could hopefully start to remember them. But he’d been willing to do it, for Justin. He’d felt it was the least he could do, given that Justin wouldn’t have been in that mess at all if it weren’t for him. So he suffered through it. But he could never really talk about it. Even now, he didn’t want to talk about it. Or think about it.

Brian had pushed all of the memories and the thoughts and the feelings aside, just like he’d done all of his life. Locked them up behind his walls. And now, if his nightmares were any indication, it seemed the wall had not only been breached, but the floodgates had apparently burst open, drowning Brian in memories he’d much rather forget.

He knew that the horrifying way in which he’d dreamed the bashing was not really the way it happened -- but it was certainly a manifestation of how he’d felt about it at the time, and, he supposed, how his subconscious still felt about it now.

And then, to dream the second horror of Justin’s accident -- to witness it and not be able to do anything to stop it or to bring him comfort -- Brian wasn’t sure what that dream was trying to say to him. He only knew that he didn’t want to hear it.

He wanted to touch Justin. He knew that was going to be the only way he could truly ground himself after the terrible night he’d had.

So he turned off the shower and dried off and dressed, then called Michael to let him know he was ready to go to the hospital. Brian didn’t particularly like feeling dependent on other people to get places, but there was nothing he could do about that at the moment. Not until he called his insurance company and tried to figure out what to do about the fact that he no longer had a car. But the car was secondary -- what was more important was making sure that Justin was going to be alright. He’d deal with the car later. And in the meantime, he’d deal with Michael. He knew his friend meant well, but sometimes he could be overbearing and a little too helpful. Brian wasn’t as resistant to it now as he had been in the early days of his “new” life, but he still didn’t like it.

Brian and Michael arrived at the hospital that morning to good news -- they’d performed another CT scan on Justin and found that the swelling in his brain had come down, and they could start weaning him off of the drugs that were keeping him in the coma. They still didn’t know what long term effects or damage he might have, since the brain was very complex, but they were seeing what appeared to be normal neurological activity, so they expected him to at least wake up.

Brian would take that -- Justin being awake. Being able to see his husband’s clear, blue eyes. Knowing that he was able to look back at him and see that he was there. That he’d be there. He wasn’t going anywhere, no matter what.

That was one thing that was changing this time for Brian. He wasn’t running away. He was staying right there.

Hearing that news -- that things were starting to right themselves in Justin’s brain -- made Brian feel like he could breathe again. Like maybe for once, something was going to go right. All he cared about was Justin being with him -- awake and alert and aware. And whatever else turned out to be the result of this injury, they’d deal with it together.

The process was slow. Brian spent the day by Justin’s side, holding his hand, trying to keep his own thoughts from drifting back to the awful dreams he’d had that night. Focusing on Justin. Spending so much time sitting still, plus the pain in his shoulder, had him getting creative with his pressure relief methods -- leaning forward and sideways instead of his usual lifting up. But he was remembering to do it. He honestly wasn’t sure he had for the first couple of days, because he’d been so distracted. Debbie, Michael, and Jennifer all three tooks turns forcing him to drink water and making him eat something, even though his stomach was still feeling unsettled from the previous night, and he didn’t manage to eat much. He didn’t want to leave the room, so he ate what little bit he did, right there. He wanted to be the first person Justin saw when he woke up, so he wasn’t going anywhere. He even hated taking bathroom breaks, because he didn’t want to be away from Justin’s bedside at all.

Other people drifted in and out of the room, just as they had for the past two days. Lindsay had stopped by briefly also. Brian wanted to ask her about the paintings, but he was afraid he might lose it again if he tried to talk about that, so he tabled the issue for now and decided to come back to it later. But most of the time, it was Brian and Jennifer in the room, sitting together, usually not saying anything, and not really needing to.

The first step in Justin’s awakening came a while before he ever appeared to be conscious, when he started fighting against the respirator. That scared Brian to death, because it sounded like Justin was choking on the goddamn tube, but the hospital staff wasn’t the slightest bit alarmed. They acted like the entire thing was completely normal -- just another day at work. And soon after that, Justin was breathing on his own, with a mask providing him extra oxygen.

Slowly, he was coming back to Brian. He just wasn’t conscious yet.

And the longer time wore on, the more anxious Brian started getting, anticipating what type of state Justin would be in when he finally woke up. Would he even know who Brian was?

He hoped so, because he wasn’t sure he could take that. He was ready for just about anything else, but having his husband not recognize him would probably tear his heart out.

It took a couple more hours before Justin’s eyelids fluttered open for the first time, then were immediately squeezed shut, as his face twisted into a painful grimace. Jennifer had been sitting beside Brian, and quickly got up and crossed the room to turn the already-dim lights completely off.

“Hey, Sunshine,” Brian said, rubbing his thumb over the back of Justin’s hand. “The light hurts, huh?”

Justin nodded slightly, but it looked like that hurt too. Brian knew Justin was probably in a lot of pain, and confused, and scared, and every bit of that was being confirmed in Justin’s facial expressions and his eyes, even though he would only open them briefly, a couple of seconds at a time, before blinking them closed again.

Brian didn’t know what to say, or if he should talk at all. If talking to Justin might make his pain worse. Jennifer was in tears beside of him, gently pushing Justin’s hair back off his forehead as he fought off sleep. Brian had tears in his eyes too. He didn’t have words for how relieved he was.

Eventually, Justin focused his gaze on Brian, blinking heavily a few more times before he whispered, “Brian…” and let his eyes drift closed again.

Brian let out a breath he didn’t even know he’d been holding. Right now, he couldn’t think of a better anniversary gift than this.

He remembers me, Brian thought to himself. He remembers me.

He was awake. He was aware. He was alive.

And all seemed right in Brian’s world.