"Remember tonight... for it is the beginning of always"
- Dante

The music was too loud and harsh and the bodies were undulating too eagerly and Justin hated the weight and pressure of the hand resting at the small of his back. Hated it. The size and tension of it was all off and the placement was a bit too high. It felt wrong in so many ways and, all things considered, it wasn't really the hand he wanted anyway. He wanted to feel the weight and clarity of heavy cream against his skin and this had all the consistency of skim milk. But he'd done this thing - they'd done this thing - and now they had to live with it.

"You alright?"

"Yeah, I will be," Justin said.

Ethan was a good guy, a regular guy. The total anti-Brian. Hearty chuck steak as opposed to chateaubriand. Brian was the spice and pepper and headiness of Shiraz that heated up the soul and Ethan was the candied sweetness of Moscato in a screw top bottle. He might not hit all the palatable highlights, but he was accessible and easy. And if living with and loving Brian had taught Justin anything it was that he needed to readjust his wants and tastes. Isn't that what this thing was all about? It was simply a matter of relational ergonomics and Justin had finally figured it out. Brian and he would always be oil and vinegar - given the right circumstances they mixed with each other, but those circumstances required turmoil. It was the quiet times that doomed them, that separated them.

Justin gave himself a little mental shake when he felt his stomach rumble. Seemed fitting that he'd indulge in the food metaphors when hungry. And he'd been starving for a lot of things lately.

"C'mon. Let's go grab something to -" Justin's request was interrupted by the sudden lack of music and the squawk of the DJ's microphone.

"Attention everybody! If one of you lovely people happens to be a doctor, we could really use your assistance near the front bar right about now."

"Wow." Justin chuckled slightly. "I think that's a first."

"Wonder what's going on?" Ethan's brow furrowed in curiosity.

"No idea, but pretty much everyone I know is here tonight. I'm going to check on what's happening."

"Justin, it's not that I'm totally unfeeling, but there's absolutely nothing you could do and I'm sure you'll find out all the details tomorrow." Ethan had never been completely comfortable in this kind of setting and, honestly, the more distance he could put between Brian Kinney and Justin right now, the better he'd feel about everything.

"Tomorrow?" Justin questioned. "Ethan, it could be Deb, or my mom."

Ethan knew Justin was right. Didn't make him happy, but he'd look like the biggest jerk in history if he argued that point right now.

Turned out that Deb and Jennifer were just fine. Brian Kinney, however, hadn't been quite so lucky.

The hospital waiting room was pretty well packed, everyone waiting around for word on the condition of Babylon's favorite son. Justin sat stonily in a corner, flanked by his mother on one side and Daphne on the other, neither touching the man. Justin had sent Ethan home, knowing that adding him in the mix would seem a bit like rubbing salt in a wound to many of those waiting. Brian's wound.

When he'd approached the front of the club, frantic to make sure his mom was okay, Justin's heart had nearly stopped when a sea of bodies parted and he saw Brian laying at the bottom of the catwalk stairways with a gash in his head. Paramedics had arrived by that time and were bracing his neck and compressing the head wound, preparing an unconscious Brian for loading on a gurney.

"Sweetheart," Justin heard his mother's voice and felt her light touch on his arm. "They're taking him to Allegheny. Why don't you ride with me, all right?"

Justin heard his mother's words, but they didn't process. He couldn't take his eyes off the scene in front of him. Brian. Unconscious and bleeding. And it was Justin's fault. He didn't doubt that at all. He'd taken Brian's bait, let ego or pride or whatever-the-fuck get the best of him, and he'd turned his back on this man tonight, of all nights, in this place, of all places. It was Justin's fault that Brian was...

"Justin?"

"Um, yeah. Yeah." Justin responded but just couldn't pull his attention away from the traumatic scene of Brian bleeding, being taken to the hospital, maybe... "Take me by the loft first, though." He wondered if his voice sounded as measured to his mother as it did to him.

"Honey, are you sure? You don't want to go straight to the hospital?"

"No, I'm sure. I have to get something."

"Get something? Sweetheart, surely, under the circumstances, whatever that is can wait."

Justin glanced at his mother, confused. Wait? Then he realized that she didn't know. No one knew, really, because it hadn't been an issue. Until now. "The paperwork," he stated, a little too calmly. "I have to get some paperwork. I'm Brian's POA."

And now the earlier events of the night seemed even more cruel in the harsh light of the hospital waiting room. A few hours ago he was walking away from Brian, relinquishing any relationship they'd had, at least any memory of the one they'd had a few months ago. Now he was possibly going to be making Brian's medical decisions for him. Justin wondered if he could possibly fuck up any more spectacularly.

Michael, Deb and Lindsay hadn't been completely happy with the discovery that Brian had given Justin legal control over his affairs and personal decisions. Everyone thought they had some proprietary claim where Brian was concerned that should, somehow, supersede any representative Brian had chosen to designate: Michael was his best friend, Deb his other mother, Lindsay the mother of his son. Deb and Lindsay eventually recognized that neither their emotional ties to Brian nor their disapproval of the POA mattered after the legalities were pointed out by Mel.

"You're a fucking piece of work, you little shit."

Michael's distaste for Justin was palpable, on the other hand. Whatever level of friendship they'd attained over the last year or so was blown to bits with the appearance of one Ethan Gold, but Justin knew Michael's animosity had always been there, simmering just under the surface. Lying in wait for someone to turn up the heat and bring it to a full boil. It was pretty much rolling at the moment.

"You use Brian, cheat on him and humiliate him in front of everyone, and think you can just come in here with a handful of papers and make all his decisions?" Michael made sure he had a full audience for his little speech. "I don't think so."

In the end, however, Michael couldn't avoid the legalities either and was left with little more than the opportunity to make crass comments about the dubious nature of Justin' parentage when medical personnel came around with information on the surgery Brian was undergoing.

When the surgeon finally showed up, calling Justin to the side to speak with him privately, it seemed they'd all been waiting for days, though Justin knew, of course, that was merely an illusion born of anxiety. One glance at the generic clock discretely placed on the wall above the coffee area told him it had actually been a little over seven hours since he'd arrived. Seven hours with little word and endless worry.

"Mr. Taylor?" Justin rubbed his weary eyes and glanced at the tag on the man's lab jacket.

"Dr. Singh... is Brian out of surgery? Is he going to be okay?" His voice was steady, all business. What he really wanted to do was fall apart and demand to be taken to see Brian immediately, regardless of what information the doctor might have for him. In spite of it, perhaps. Instead of it. He wasn't at all certain he wanted to know the final verdict with Brian's bloody wound refusing to leave his memory. Jesus, there was so much blood.

"Mr. Kinney's obvious injuries appeared more serious than they actually were, I assure you. Head wounds tend to bleed rather profusely, especially with the kind of blood alcohol levels Mr. Kinney's tests indicated, and he did need several stitches to close the cut. And it's not unusual for a patient to present unconscious after such an injury." Dr. Singh watched the young man's shoulders relax a bit and knew that he would see them tense again shortly. "As we discovered, however, there was a hemorrhage in his brain. We have no way of knowing at this point what caused that bleeding. My initial guess is that he already had a weakened blood vessel that simply reacted to an increase in pressure from some source, perhaps the fall. In essence, he had a stroke."

"Fuck." It was the only thing Justin could think of to say. "Will there be... will he be okay?"

"It's unlikely that he'd have an occurrence of this severity and escape with no side effects, Mr. Taylor. What they might be? We won't know that until he wakes up. The surgery was fairly invasive, as well, although we were able to stop the remaining bleed. He should actually be awake within the next few hours and we can assess any issues at that time."

"Thank you." Justin looked at the doctor with such a mixture of gratitude and grief that the man literally hurt for him. This was never a particularly easy kind of conversation to have.

"We're waiting on the toxicology screens to come back, which will take at least twenty-four hours, but I'm going to venture a guess, based on the alcohol level and the fact that this event occurred at a night club, that they might show some indications of drugs in his system." Justin just nodded. What could he say to that? There was no doubt that drugs were in Brian's system tonight, of all nights. "Mr. Taylor," Dr. Singh continued. "Mr. Kinney is very lucky to be alive right now. If he had been alone when this happened..." He let the thought linger, unfinished. "We will handle any issues that arise, of course, but be thankful that he'll be alive to deal with them."

Justin simply nodded again. He was thankful, so much more than this doctor could even imagine. But he was just as heartbroken and terrified.

The rest of the family was, not surprisingly, crushed at the news Justin gave them. They'd pretty much been shocked into silence. Even Debbie was too stunned to comment. They all simply cried together. Justin felt himself enveloped in Vic' arms and he quietly wept into the older man's shoulder. Somewhere he could feel his phone vibrating and knew it was Ethan checking in. Justin let it go to voice mail, though it had been hours since he'd talked with him. He certainly couldn't face speaking with him now. Not now. Not now that his beautiful, alive, obstinate, creative, intelligent, stupid, stubborn Brian had a stroke. Fuck Ethan. Fuck god. Fuck everything.

"Mr. Taylor?"

He snapped awake at the voice and the gentle hand on his shoulder. Somehow, he'd fallen asleep and suddenly felt like the biggest coward in the world for sinking into that oblivion for a while. He rubbed his eyes and gazed up at Dr. Singh's bearded face. It struck Justin as odd that he would notice how beautiful the man was at a time like this, but his elegant and compassionate presentation was difficult to dismiss. That bit of artist that Justin couldn't suppress noted how the orange of the man's turban highlighted the flecks of gold in his dark eyes.

"Yeah." He was sluggish from sleep. "Brian? Is Brian okay?"

"He's awake," the doctor replied without completely answering Justin's question. "May I speak with you privately?"

Justin looked around and saw the anxiety on the faces of this loyal little group sitting with him in the waiting room. "Of course, yeah," he responded, but the pain in the middle of his gut, the pain that had been a constant for the last several hours, intensified. 

As they walked, Dr. Singh talked. Brian had been awake a couple of hours but was now sedated again due to an anxiety reaction. He seemed to have remarkably suffered few serious physical effects from the hemorrhage, aside from the pain involved in surgical recovery. There was no weakness or loss of physical function or intellect, it appeared, and only a seemingly limited speech impairment that most likely would correct with therapy and simple daily use. Brian seemed to grasp both basic and complex concepts such as politics and math, his reasoning appeared to be within normal parameters, and his emotional reactions, although extreme at the moment, didn't seem to be outside the realm of normal under the circumstances. Justin's reaction to all this information was obviously relief, even elation. Dr. Singh felt a pull at his heart when he saw the brilliant smile break out across the young man's face because he knew he was about to make that smile disappear.

"I repeat that, thankfully, your friend doesn't seem to have suffered any major physical limitations brought on by the stroke or the surgery..."

Justin could hear the word coming. "But?"

"It appears that Mr. Kinney is having some issues with recall."

"He doesn't recall the accident?" Justin asked. "That's not uncommon, is it? I still don't recall the weeks right before my own brain injury." He was mildly concerned about the doctor's phrasing, but with his own history from the bashing, Justin understood the chances were high that Brian wouldn't remember the time surrounding his fall.

"He doesn't recall anything of his past, Mr. Taylor," Dr. Singh said. "At all."

Justin tied to process the doctor's words, to put them into some kind of order that would make sense up against his own experience. Okay. So, Brian was suffering from some level of amnesia like Justin himself had. He could understand that. But the feeling he got from Dr. Singh's words didn't seem to stop there. "What exactly does that mean, Dr. Singh? At all?"

"Mr. Kinney seems to be suffering from what is known as global retrograde amnesia, Mr. Taylor. He claims to have no recollection of anything before he regained consciousness, a little over an hour ago."

Justin halted his steps and slumped against the wall, watching the compassion in the eyes of this soft-spoken man. He wondered if he should laugh or cry.

Peter had seen many tragedies, but he had forgotten them all.

- J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan

Justin stood in the corner of Room 334, partially hidden behind the blue and green striped privacy curtain, watching Brian finally sleep. Or whoever it was that used to be Brian. He felt a bit safer here in the shadows and he let them provide the first respite from anxiety he'd had in over forty-eight hours.

It had been traumatic for him to see Brian after the doctor's pronouncement in the middle hours of Saturday morning. He'd hoped at first that the doctor was merely overstating for effect, but he quickly found out that, if anything, the doctor had understated the situation. Brian had no idea who or where he was. He had no idea what had happened to him. He had no memory whatsoever of any part of his life, not his childhood or his job, not his friends or his son. Not of Justin, and even if they weren't together at the time, that pierced Justin to the core. He knew it was selfish to be, well, selfish, but he couldn't help the devastation that being totally erased from Brian's history caused him.

Dr. Singh and the neuropsychologist, Dr. Parma, had gone into greater detail with Justin about the condition from which they believed Brian suffered. It wasn't common, but it wasn't unheard of, either. Although the drugs and hemorrhage could be held accountable for some level of amnesia, it was also quite likely that there was a psychogenic aspect to the global scope of Brian's memory loss. Part of him most likely wanted to forget, and he did. This wasn't the romanticized ‘starting over' that Hollywood liked to depict. It was devastating and, most certainly, life altering if it lasted for any length of time. Brian would be faced with the onerous task of finding his way out of the middle of a vast, empty ocean with no landmarks to guide his way.

Now as Justin stood here in the shadows recalling the barren look in Brian's eyes, that hint of panic when he'd met those empty eyes for the first time and found no recognition in them, he felt the same gutted pain he had felt two days ago, and a fresh wave of guilt swept over him like a tsunami. Brian's emotional pain had reached a point that he wanted to forget. If Justin hadn't left with Ethan... If he hadn't done it there at Babylon in front of everyone... if if if if...

"You know me."

The words startled Justin and drew him from the darkness. The doctor had left and the nurses had already done their duty. It was just him watching Brian sleep. Or at least Justin had thought him to be asleep. But he hadn't been, and the statement had been thrown out on such a tentative thread that Justin first thought someone else had entered the room. But it had been Brian's voice, that quiet one he used on those rare occasions he allowed his fears to seep through the cracks.

"Yeah, I know you, Brian." He wanted so badly to just touch him but feared the panic would return. They'd had to keep Brian in a twilight sedation since shortly after he realized he didn't even know his name. The doctor had allowed Justin to remain on the periphery, however, since he was Brian's medical proxy and they really weren't sure yet just how much of a participant Brian could be in his own treatment program. So, Justin had stood watch, a sentinel to his sleeping charge, his only interaction being nearly two days ago, when Brian hadn't recognized him at all.

"Sorry, I can't return the courtesy of using your name. Bit of a memory problem here I'm told." There was a hint of the old sardonic wit attached to the despondency of that comment and it made Justin smile a little to see that little bit of his Brian peeking through.

"Justin," he said. "Justin Taylor."

"Since you're not wearing a lab coat and you've been lurking in the shadows for a while, I assume you know me from somewhere outside of this hospital?"

"You weren't supposed to know I was lurking," Justin joked. It seemed odd to be joking, but it beat the hell out of the tears that were just around the corner.

"Yeah, well, apparently the memory is not conditionally attached to the senses of sight or hearing." Brian pulled himself up in the bed a little and winced when his head met the pillow again. "Hurts like a bitch."

"I imagine it does." Justin automatically reached out and gently ran his fingers through Brian's hair, brushing a bit of it away from the stitches, pushing another bit behind his ear. It was such a normal thing, something he'd done a hundred times before. An intimate thing. Too intimate, he realized and pulled his hand back like it had been burned. Brian's eyes followed his movement and settled on Justin's face, studying it.

"Who am I?"

"Brian Kinney."

"I've been told what my name is." Brian's frustration was evident. "Who am I to you? Why are you here and not someone else?"

Justin, Dr. Singh and the rest of the medical team had discussed at length over the last two days exactly what information should be given to Brian. There was really no cohesive school of thought on the subject of exactly how to interact initially with someone with this level of amnesia and they'd decided that just being honest, providing factual answers with as little opinion involved as possible was probably the best approach. Brian wasn't going to suddenly have a catastrophic rush of memories because he was told some facts. Justin still wasn't looking forward to these conversations, however. He took a deep breath.

"You made me your power of attorney, made me your medical proxy, several months ago. We really weren't sure what your condition would be -"

"So, I was impaired in some way before I lost my memory?"

"No, you were fine before -"

"Then why would I appoint a medical proxy?"

Justin hesitated and rubbed his eyes as he considered a way to answer Brian's question without a lot of, as yet, uncomfortable information being pushed on the man. He sounded so confused and there really was no way to know how much was too much when it came to giving him details on his life. Brian wasn't asking something factual, like his shoe size or occupation - he was asking for insight into the reasoning behind his actions.

"I know I've forgotten me," Brian continued irritably, "but my intellect seems to be in place, and I don't seem to have forgotten all the semantic little details about how the world operates, and that doesn't seem like something the average man would do without reason..."

With his hands over his eyes, with the room and the visual particulars of the hospital blocked out, Justin could almost imagine that this was his Brian. His Brian. This voice, with its insufferable edge of command, was so familiar it made him want to laugh at the fucking practical joke the speaker was so obviously playing, to shout at the beautiful face that he could stop being a prick now. That Justin got it, the punishment had been meted out and Justin was duly chastised for his insolence.

"Give me some clue here, okay? Just some kind of clue." Justin opened his eyes and met the desperate plea in Brian's. "Who is Brian Kinney to Justin Taylor?"

"We're partners," he finally said, and realized that, in spite of all the bullshit, in spite of Ethan and accidents and lost histories, it was the most truthful thing he could say. "We're partners."

Brian bit his lip and sighed, relaxing a little for the first time in hours. "I'm gay?" he asked and watched Justin nod. Then he laughed a truly genuine laugh. "Okay. Well, that would explain the current condition of my dick, then."

The test results had all come back and the cocktail of illicit drugs in Brian's system, along with the trauma of the hemorrhage in the cortex and the surgery to repair that, were confirmed as the likely physical causes of Brian's memory loss. The fall, it seemed, did little more than cause a need for caution and stitches and was, itself, most likely a result of the drugs and hemorrhage. Other than taking time to recover from the brain surgery and his slightly slowed speech, Brian was physically fine. Emotionally, however, he was all over the map. He had no historical frame of reference on how to act or react in any given situation. He had no history, no autobiographical resources upon which to call, no idea what worked for him, what made him happy or sad. What fulfilled him. Finding an emotional balance would simply take time, Dr. Parma assured them, and Brian would eventually find it. He might have retained all his semantic and operational knowledge about how the world should work, but Brian had no idea how Brian Kinney could, would, or should behave. He was starting from ground zero, reinventing himself and that scared the shit out of him. Justin had the disturbing thought that this is where Mary Shelley found her inspiration for her Frankenstein creation.

Only a week after he was admitted to Allegheny General, Brian was discharged. There would, of course, be follow-up appointments with the surgeon, neurologists, therapists, counselors, his own doctor... But there was no longer any reason for him to remain in the hospital. Brian would either remember or he wouldn't and there wasn't much a hospital bed could do to facilitate that. Frustration was the primary emotion for both men.

It was awkward for Brian to go to a place he didn't remember, a place everyone told him was his ‘home', where he assumed he'd been some version of content. But it had the feel of a temporary residence to him in many ways, with the minimalistic furnishings and open floor plan. It was too cool and modern, void of both color and soul.

But he could see signs that it was somewhat of a shared space - two toothbrushes in the holder, different size clothing hanging in the closet and in the drawers, though it all looked a little off kilter to him. He wasn't certain what was his and what was Justin's in other personal items, however. Had he chosen that abstract painting with the bright splashes of blue and yellow, or had the other man? Justin had told him he'd been in advertising - an executive of some sort - so art would have been important to him, wouldn't it?

Justin felt it, too, the awkwardness. How could he not? It had been more than a week since he'd slept in the loft and that night he and Brian had been like strangers. Justin found that ridiculously ironic now, given the circumstances at hand, and so incredibly sad. He'd felt almost as much distance between them that night as he did now and he would forever wonder, if he'd just spoken up that night as Brian held him in their bed, if perhaps Brian's amnesia could have been avoided.

"We've not talked about how we're going to manage this. The living arrangements I mean." Brian picked up a green apple from the counter. He took a bite, grimaced at the tart fruit, and tossed the remainder into the trash can. "I suppose you're going to tell me those were my favorites?" He rubbed his hand on his jeans as Justin nodded. "Yeah, not so much now, I think."

"We can get whatever you think you'll like," Justin said, and this time Brian just nodded. No, awkward didn't begin to describe it.

"You said we're partners. You're a college student, right? How do we do the money now? Pay the bills, since I'm obviously not going to be working at the moment? Looks like this place might take more than a few bucks to maintain."

"I've covered that with your assistant," Justin explained. "She's handling the paperwork and, since you were a partner, the agency will pay your salary for quite a while. Some kind of disability insurance that pays out the majority of your income should also kick in."

Brian nodded again, grabbed a bottle of water from the fridge and slumped down onto the bar stool. "Nothing feels right," he said angrily. "Not a damn thing here feels right. It's cold and emotionless and there's not a single piece of clothing in that closet that doesn't look like it cost a fortune. The sheets feel like silk and I'm guessing that coffee maker didn't come from the discount store, Justin." He gulped the water and then ran the cool bottle across his forehead. "Did I like this Architectural Digest look or was I just being pretentious?"

Justin sat beside Brian and shrugged. "You liked fine things, Brian. So what? You worked hard and you could afford them. But you also liked to spend time with your friends, share a beer, play pool, listen to jazz, watch old black and white movies... You were also generous to the point of hurting yourself to help someone you care about." He cupped Brian's shoulder and felt Brian lean into the touch. "These things represented you in a way, I guess...but they didn't really tell the whole story about you."

Brian sighed and shrugged, twisting away from Justin's hand as he walked through the large, open room. "I don't think I've even said thanks for staying with me this hell of a week. Doesn't sound like a very generous and caring guy to me."

"Oh, I think you've kind of had a few other matters taking up the better part of your time lately. You know, like brain surgery and total global geothermal amnesia." He grinned when Brian actually laughed. There hadn't been a lot to laugh about this week.

"Well, thanks anyway. For some reason I don't feel quite so... chaotic when you're around."

"Just call me Dr. Harmony."

Brian grinned. "So, doc, feel like a little stroll down Memory Lane?"

"You sure you're up for that?"

"Might as well. Putting it off won't change the facts, will it?"

For the next few hours, they talked. Not about who Brian Kinney had been but about the major players in Brian's life, a few whose forgotten faces he'd encountered briefly in the hospital. His friends. They talked about his son, how many of the little boy's mannerism had begun to mimic Brian's. Brian winced a bit at that detail.

Justin avoided the subject of Jack and Joan Kinney, which wasn't hard to do since he really had very limited knowledge of them personally. He wasn't going to open a can of worms he couldn't contain. There in the quiet of the loft, on ground that was familiar at least to Justin, they bonded in a way they had done little of before. They talked.

"Blessed are the forgetful, for they get the better even of their blunders."

Friedrich Nietzsche

Brian admitted he wasn't at all sure how he wanted to be reintroduced to these strangers he'd heard about. Justin hadn't talked about them in any negative light, but there was a subtext he couldn't help but hear, and the brief encounters Brian had with some of them in the hospital, while he was in a precarious and very vulnerable place, had somewhat intimidated him. With the exception of Gus, whom he hadn't seen yet, he said he wanted to wait to meet them all again. Justin just smiled enigmatically and mentioned something about changing locks.

"So, Michael is the best friend, Deb and Vic are the parental figures, Lindsay and Melanie are the parents to my son... What about us?"

Justin sighed. "Complicated story," he began. "I was seventeen and you were twenty-nine. I was a virgin and you... changed that." Justin grinned and blushed a bit there. "I stalked you and you kept pushing me away. Until you gave up." He bumped Brian's shoulder with his own.

"Oh, so I was a regular paragon of morality."

"Hey, it's just the truth. At least I was legal."

"So, I wouldn't have gone to jail, just hell," Brian moaned.

"More interesting group of people there, at least."

Brian chuckled. "I like you, Justin Taylor." He noticed Justin blush again and try to hide a grin at his words. "So, we lived happily ever after and then I just forgot it all? Jesus."

"Uh... not quite. We were pretty explosive, Brian. We had a phenomenal connection sexually, but sometimes the other stuff...? Some things happened; we didn't handle them well. We weren't very successful at just being together."

"You may as well spell out the subtext, Justin. We broke up? Fought? Cheated? What?"

"All of the above. More..."

"Tell me."

So, he did. Justin tried to be as honest as he could with Brian, telling him about the prom and the bashing and the forgotten dance. About the struggles with panic attacks and how Brian helped him through that difficult time in his life. About the tricks and the college tuition and... Ethan. That was the hardest thing to admit, his leaving Brian on the very night of his fall and hemorrhage. The night their world changed. Brian remained silent throughout the account, his face sometimes impassive, sometimes thoughtful.

Justin couldn't know the turmoil going on inside of Brian. Brian had no memory of any of this. None of it. It honestly was like listening to someone providing a synopsis of a novel. It didn't hurt him on a personal level, even the part about Ethan. But he could see the pain Justin was obviously in, could hear it in each and every word. Could hear the guilt and made a guess at just how unfair that guilt was that the young man carried. He'd figured out during this last week that Justin was a pretty good man. He'd been there day and night in the hospital, listening to Brian's fear and anger and dealing with his mood swing and headaches. He'd come to trust the kid, to like him. But he didn't much like the portrait of ‘them' that Justin had painted.

"So, we were pretty fucked up?"

"You could say that."

"And we broke up the night I had the ...?"

"It had been going sour for a while, but yeah. That was the night I was walking away."

"If I hadn't had... whatever the hell I had... you'd be with this other guy now?"

"Really? No. I don't think I would have stayed with him even a week. I didn't love him, Brian. He was just... there. Convenient. Attentive." He breathed in and out slowly to stave off his own panic. "I was just so damned tired of us fucking with each other."

Brian was quiet for several long moments. "Why?" he finally asked. "Why were you with me at the hospital, through all this bullshit, if you were walking away?"

Justin turned slightly to see Brian's eyes. He wanted the man to know the truth of his answer, to believe him. "Because regardless of the bullshit we dealt out to each other, I love you, Brian. I have almost from the moment I saw you and I always will. Not exactly the sanest thing in the world, maybe, but there it is. I love you."

For the first time since his fall, Brian pulled Justin to him, hugged him. "I don't remember any of it, Justin," he said quietly. "I wish I could say I feel the same way, but right now I don't know what I feel about much of anything. What I know is that you didn't screw up alone from the sound of it." Brian pulled Justin closer, the warmth of the young man's body seeping into his own. "I like you, Justin Taylor, but I don't know that I'd like Brian Kinney much."

Brian had never felt any need to filter himself or his comments. That aspect of Brian's old self hadn't faded. If anything, it had risen to a more dominant place in his personality. In those instances where he might once have ignored slights and insults, or even mockingly sympathized with the negative opinion of another, he now had no desire to do so. He had seemingly traded one level of honesty, a level liberally sprinkled with internalized anger and self-deprecation, for one wrapped in a new realism. He found no reason to hide behind rhetorical jabs and didn't remember that he was known for poisoning the tips of his barbs before he hurled them. His new honesty was, at times, just as brutal, but it was cleaner and simpler.

The few brief encounters he'd had with old friends in the hospital had left him emotionally wary. The weeping and gnashing of teeth Michael, Lindsay, and Deb exhibited in that gray room had unsettled him, increased the anxiety that was already ever-present in this new, hollow existence. Justin had quickly hurried them all out into the hall when he saw Brian's breathing speed up and his eyes dart around the room. He'd ignored their cries of personal injustice and affronts to their rights as Brian's family and had gone back in to sit quietly at the man's side, defusing the emotional bombs when the family had set fire to the wicks. He remembered the panic and the trapped feeling. It hadn't been that long ago that he was going through it himself. When the nurse had come in the next time for Brian's vitals, Justin had requested that only visitors approved by him personally were to be allowed in Brian's room until further notice. The nurse notated the chart.

After their discussion the night Brian came home, their stroll down Memory Lane as Brian had so quaintly described it, they'd fallen into a pattern of discussing pre-amnesia Brian with only the facts of Brian's life before. They discussed his job and finances, dug around for photos of Brian and documents about educational achievements, crawled through the files on Brian's computer in an effort to find something that connected Brian to his old self. None of it helped.

They discovered that Brian's knowledge of the operation of society and the world as a whole was intact. Although he couldn't recall who the various presidents had been over his lifetime, he knew what a president was and how they were placed into office. Even if he couldn't recall attending marketing and business courses at Mellon, he had no problem interpreting the flux of the stock market from the business news or recognizing a potentially effective ad in a magazine. When it came to technology, an area in which Brian had previously been well versed, however, Brian was flummoxed. Computers confused him and his Blackberry was nothing more than a conveniently sized phone. There seemed to be no rhyme or reason to what he'd retained and what he'd lost.

At his first appointment with Dr. Parma it was pretty much concluded that Brian would most likely never regain his memory, that he would remain a man without a personal history. The pronouncement only depressed Brian slightly regarding the specific information he'd lost, but on a broader scope he spiraled into a darkness. He felt lost and, illogically, abandoned. He could see, feel, taste, hear, learn... but he was no one really. He was constantly wondering if this action or that comment was based on some subliminal conditioning that he'd forgotten, some leftover of a self that no longer existed, if it was a reflection of the few weeks he'd been ‘alive', or if it was something innate in the blank slate quality of being at it very core.

The thing that disturbed Brian most, that threw him into a mixture of melancholy and anger was that others were privy to intimate knowledge about Brian Kinney that even Brian Kinney wasn't privy to any more. He would never again be able to agree with or rebut or join in a retelling of a single moment of his own past. Others were the keepers of his past. He wasn't. No amount of factual information could replace the emotional and psychological desert he encountered every day.

"Most everything you think you know about me is nothing more than memories." 

- Haruki Murakami, A Wild Sheep Chase

A little over a week after he was released from the hospital Justin went back to school. Brian was comfortable enough in the loft now, felt less disturbed by the starkness of the place, that he assured Justin he would be okay. He wasn't up to venturing out on the forgotten streets alone, but he had a whole array of movies and books he was discovering again that would keep him occupied. Brian gave Justin a small kiss on the cheek, handed him his backpack and urged him on his way.

They touched now, sparingly, but being a couple at this point was a non-issue. Although Brian and Justin shared the same space, the same bed even, and were actually enjoying getting to know each other, their dearth of remembered history still weighed too heavy on Brian to let him think beyond it. He was getting to know Justin, not only from the living of the present, but from details of Justin's own past. The past that had created the delightfully complex young man he was in the present. And Brian didn't have that with which to reciprocate. The Brian that Justin remembered was... well... he was no longer a factor in the equation.  

Brian looked at the clock in confusion when he heard a key in the door and the initial groan of old metal. He'd only left a little over half an hour ago so Justin certainly couldn't be finished with his class yet. But it wasn't Justin.

"Hey, Brian."

Brian stared at the man entering through the previously locked door, his heart rate increasing slightly and his adrenaline pumping a bit more than it had been. He didn't think he liked this at all. "Michael, right?" Brian asked and saw the man's face fall slightly. "I thought I'd locked the door."

"You did," Michael said with a sheepish grin. "I have a key."

"You... have a key. Huh. Must be one of those things I forgot."

"I've had one since you bought the loft years ago. For emergencies and stuff."

"And this would fall in the ‘stuff' category?" Brian asked bluntly. "Do you habitually let yourself into someone's home without knocking because of ‘stuff'?"

"C'mon, Brian, we've been best friends for almost twenty years."

"Sorry. You were friends with someone else. I honestly don't remember you," Brian bluntly pointed out. "Or him."

It never occurred to Michael that he'd overstepped his boundaries. It had been two weeks since Brian's fall, or stroke, or whatever the hell it was, and he missed his friend, missed the laughs and the connection they'd had all those years. It had been rare that a day went by without the two of them getting together or talking unless Brian was away on business and it felt like a huge part of his world had just disappeared lately. He couldn't help wondering if Justin was the reason Brian hadn't gotten in touch with any of the gang since his release from the hospital and he knew from Jennifer that Justin had class today, so he'd taken the opportunity to see Brian alone.

"Yeah, I know, but I thought maybe we could talk, try to maybe bring some of the memories back," he said sadly. "I miss my friend, Brian."

Brian wasn't sure he wanted to have this visit now, here, though he felt some empathy for the man. He was fully aware that his memory loss didn't only affect him. It affected everyone who knew him, in varying degrees. But the fact that they could remember him, and he wasn't afforded that luxury, caused him a lot of pain. And more than a little anger that they couldn't understand that.

"Listen... Michael," he said, "I'm not really up for a get-to-re-know-you session right now. I'm sorry if that's not what you want to hear, but it's just the way it is."

"I brought some of our old school yearbooks and some old pictures of us all at ma's." Michael unloaded the bundle he'd brought with him onto the counter and started flipping through them as if he hadn't heard Brian at all. "Look! We were about 16 here. You'd just found out you made the junior varsity soccer team." He held the picture out toward Brian. "Jesus, remember how excited you were? We had a party at ma's in the back yard to celebrate. And this one? This was when you created that synthetic cum in science class, remember? You used the same stuff to glue that judge to the toilet seat after Hobbs was sentenced. God, I remember how pissed off you were about that."

Brian held the photographs in his hands without even looking at them. "Michael, I don't-"

"And remember this? This was the day we snuck into Babylon for the first time. God, you were so high that-"  

"Why are you here? Why are you doing this?" Brian asked with a little more desperation than he'd meant to convey.     

"Doing what? Trying to get you to remember who you are?" Michael had been certain that Brian would remember him. He had to, in Michael's mind, because they'd shared so much, grown up together. It hurt him when he realized Brian really didn't remember him or their years as best friends. "You're the Stud of Liberty Avenue. No apologies, no regrets, no repeats! You're Brian Kinney, for fuck's sake, the guy everybody wanted and no one could have! You're my best damned friend and I know you haven't really forgotten all that!"

Brian looked through a few of the pictures again; none of them were familiar. He felt absolutely no connection to the mirror-face staring back at him from the photos. He stacked them neatly back on the pile Michael had taken them from. "So, you think I'm playing at this? That I'm pulling some fucking prank, Michael? That the kind of best friend you had? The kind you want? Jesus Christ! I. Don't. Know. You!"

Michael stood stunned, wavering between wanting to cry and wanting to punch something in anger at Brian's words. "How the fuck can you not remember me?! We've been best friends since we were 14, for fuck's sake!"

"I don't even remember me, man! And I assume I spent a lot more time with Brian Kinney than I did with you, Michael! Now, get out of here and don't ever use that key again. Not for emergencies and certainly not for stuff. This is MY home, not yours." Brian was now standing directly in Michael's face, intimidatingly close. "Do you hear me?" 

"Yeah. Yeah, I hear you, but I don't know who the fuck you are."

"Well, that makes two of us, then, doesn't it?" Brian stared as Michael walked out the door, leaving the photos and yearbooks behind on the counter. He felt strangely proud of himself for standing down this man who had simply walked into the loft uninvited, but also felt profoundly uncertain about the security. There had been a certain safety he'd come to feel here - the only real safe feeling he'd had since waking up in the hospital - and this man had pretty much ruined that. And that was supposed to be his best friend? Lord...

Brian turned off the shower and grabbed a towel to run over his hair before he stepped out of the stall. He always felt a sense of aching loneliness as he showered but could never put his finger on the source of the feeling. So much of his life was like that. Every action came with a longing for something he felt should be there but was, instead, dancing just outside his grasp. Everything in the loft gave him that sense of distance. It was empty and cold. Foreign and uninviting. Nothing in the place sparked the least bit of familiarity for him. Dr. Parma had already told him that it was very unlikely that he would ever regain his memories and Brian was beginning to wonder if he wouldn't feel more at home, safer, in a new place that wasn't screaming "you should remember this". Not for the first time, Brian admitted that the only sense of constancy or calm he knew anymore was when he was with Justin.

Tossing the towel back on the rack, Brian left the bathroom and walked naked toward his closet. The feminine gasp and childlike squeal he heard let him know that was a big mistake. Grabbing and donning his robe, anger and fear beating drums in his chest, he turned and saw the blonde woman - Lindsay? - and a little boy sitting at the breakfast counter. Pinching the bridge of his nose he groaned out, "Don't tell me. You have a fucking key for emergencies and stuff."

"Brian! Your son..."

As angry as Brian wanted to be about yet another person simply entering his home at will, without invitation, he couldn't take his eyes off the little boy. He was adorable. He was, apparently, his son. But, as much as it pained him to even think the thought, he felt absolutely no connection to the child. If there was anything at all that was going to spark some sense of recognition, some feeling of identity, shouldn't it be his own child? But there was really nothing. His anger at the woman sitting there gaping at him returned and he jabbed a finger toward the loft entrance.

"That is not a fucking revolving door at Macy's! This is MY home. Get out." For the second time in one day, he wondered what the hell kind of people Brian Kinney had surrounded himself with.

"You can't mean that, Brian," the woman said through sudden tears.

"Yeah, I really do mean that."

At that moment Brian noticed Justin coming in and heard the man groan. "Jesus Christ. Lindsay, what are you doing here?" Before she could answer, Justin had scooped up the little boy with a "Hey, Gus Gus."

And there it was - that constant reminder that others were now the keepers of the history of Brian Kinney - a history that Brian himself no longer had rights to. He could feel the return of a darkness he hadn't felt since that first day of awakening in the hospital. He simply sat down where he was, in the middle of the floor, his gaze holding on to a nothing somewhere in the distance.

Justin handed Gus back to Lindsay and muttered, "Go".

"But I need to talk to Brian."

"No, Lindsay. You need to take Gus and leave. Now." He ushered her to the door and nearly shoved her into the entry before going over and sitting beside Brian.

"Brian?"

"I don't know my own son. Or my own life. You know my son. I don't know my own son. How am I supposed to process that shit, Justin?"

Hours later, laying in bed beside each other, fully clothed as they almost always were these days, Brian had calmed down somewhat. They passed a Marlboro back and forth as Brian told Justin about Michael and Lindsay just unlocking the door and entering without invitation, about Lindsay catching him nude, with his son in tow. About the fight with Michael.

"I think I should get out of here, out of this loft. It's like living with my own ghost all the time. Everywhere I turn, everything I pick up I have to wonder where I got it, why I got it, was there some special fucking meaning I'm supposed to remember attached to it. There's no fucking peace. None. I can't just plug myself back into a life I don't recall in the least. I'm trying to navigate a wasteland constantly populated with landmines that blow up in my face."

Justin understood, at least partially. As difficult as it would be to conceive of the Brian Kinney he met two years ago living anywhere but in this iconic shrine to hedonism and minimalistic excess, he also understood. He remembered the panic he went through after the bashing, and the feeling of dissociation from the life he'd come to know with the family. Of feeling like the outsider, the intruder, the truly ‘lost' boy.

At least he had a history with the family to actually fall back on, to help him regain his emotional balance. He had Brian - Brian who held him when he was convinced he could no longer cope, who held his hand and helped him learn to simply navigate walking in public again, who cradled him when a child's birthday gift sent him into freefall. He promised himself to be that for Brian, that tether to some brand of normal. Brian had none of the historical guideposts to help him find normal - but he did have Justin.

"Okay. I'll help you start looking tomorrow. Any idea what you want?"

"Padlocks and a couple of Dobermans?" Brian grinned widely as he bumped Justin's shoulder and snagged a Marlboro from his hand.

Justin chuckled and added, "Maybe a moat. With alligators. Very big alligators."

The expression on Brian's face as he nodded at that suggestion was so serious and contemplative, so classically sardonic Kinney, it sent Justin into a rare fit of giggles. Brian smiled as he listened to the sound - the absolute best sound he'd heard since he woke up. Thought he might just want that sound around for a while. "So...um... you knew him... tell me... Just what shit was that idiot actually thinking with these best friends and house keys?"

Justin giggled even harder and choked out, "No fucking idea." As he struggled to catch his breath, he realized he'd never had a better time in Brian Kinney's bed with his clothes on.

"Forgetfulness is the beginning of happiness as fear is the beginning of wisdom." 

- Gabriel de Tarde, Underground Man

"You want rice or potatoes with the chicken tonight?"

"We've already had rice twice this week. Go with the mashed. We have any of those sour dough rolls left?"

Six months later, Brian and Justin had settled into a new place. It was a moderately sized house on Mount Washington, as far removed from the austerity of the Loft as it could be. It just felt right, with a mixture of open floor plan and private spaces, and an attic with enough light for a fairly proper atelier. It was a house with no ghosts or landmines. It was also far enough from Liberty Avenue to give privacy and only two people had a key - Brian and Justin.

They'd had their first argument about the ownership of the house. Brian wanted to add Justin to the deed and Justin was adamantly opposed.

"You still haven't figured out that I'm an independent little shit, Brian. I can't do anything like that until I can bring something to the table, too."

"And you haven't figured out that I fucking need you, you independent little shit! I can't do this - any of this - without you. You're the only lodestar I have on this fucking ocean, the only one who doesn't expect me to play some caricature of a man I can't remember in first place, in a goddamned world I can barely recall."

That was the day their relationship changed and Justin remembered his promise to himself, a promise to be there for Brian.

Justin's name went on the deed.

The first night they spent in their new home, feeling like a virgin on his wedding night, Brian made love with Justin. He couldn't remember the thousands of times he'd had sex before, though he knew he'd done so, but all of the semantic memory was there. But the emotion, the tactile bliss, the pure exhilaration of the connection nearly brought him to tears. "Jesus," he finally said. "How the fuck could I have forgotten that?"

"Don't think you did. I don't think we've ever felt that before." He knew they hadn't. For the first time he realized that the old Brian's walls would never have allowed him to feel that. And this Brian had no walls. He just was.

Now they were solid, in a way Justin had never felt solid before. There was no feeling of eggshells under his feet, no need to have his duffle bag half packed and at the ready, no cautious fear of falling over cliffs at every turn. He'd worshipped Brian the asshole. Would have laid down his life for him. But there was a new realization that he had been in love with the bits of Brian that had shown through the small shifts in his persona, those shifts that came like flashes from the corner of one's eye. The kind you could never really be sure had ever appeared at all. But they had and now they were just here, static, not hiding behind impenetrable walls that had been erected since childhood. He was in love with all of Brian Kinney for the very first time. And it was an honest, reciprocated, soul deep love.  

Brian Kinney still fought demons, but he no longer felt the need to fight them alone. And they weren't the same demons. Every once in a while, those new demons worked for him. That was apparent one surprisingly clear spring afternoon as he and Justin were shopping for nothing in particular at the mall.

"Brian."

He turned at the sound of his name, Justin standing a bit off to the side looking through a display of dress hats in the window of Nordstrom. They'd become a bit of a passion of Brian's, and he could always use a new one.

"Yes."

"It's been quite a while since you've bothered to get in touch."

"Yes, I suppose it has," he said, simply. "Excuse me, but exactly who are you?"

"Stop being disrespectful, Brian. Always so difficult." The older woman's voice had risen slightly in irritation, and Justin turned, eyes wide when he saw Brian's mother.

"Ah. So you know me well, then."

"Hello, Mrs. Kinney." Justin decided to step in. Just in case. He didn't know much about Brian's family history, just that it wasn't good, but he'd told Brian what he knew at this point.

"I see you are still making a mockery of God's laws, Brian. And still with this... child." The disgust was plainly written on her face.

"Brian, meet your... mother."

"Oh! Well, hey, mom. Like what you've done with your hair. Steel blue is definitely your color." Brian had concluded, based on Justin's limited knowledge of Brian's childhood, and talks with Dr. Parma, who he'd seen for several weeks after waking up, that there was most likely something... unpalatable in his childhood family dynamic. If this woman was his mother, she'd pretty much just confirmed that with her approach. As he felt no ties to the woman, he, therefore, felt no need for faux politeness.

"Your insults are childish and uncalled for, Brian."

"Well, then, let me give you one that is a bit more... mature. I don't give a shit. You insult me and my partner with your very presence. Your bigotry is duly noted and rejected. It's pleasantly serendipitous that I neither recall who you are, nor care to recall who you are. Now, my partner and I will be on our way. I suggest you do the same. Good day, Mrs. Kinney." He turned and gave Justin a small kiss on his forehead. "Did you find me a hat, Justin?"

Justin smiled widely, wrapped his arm around Brian's waist, and led him toward the display. "I did. And it's perfect."

Somewhere serendipity smiled.

Life went on. Brian and Justin made their house a home. Justin graduated and began working for a graphic firm not far from where they lived. Brian, himself, embarked on a new career with the help of Jennifer Taylor, who fully appreciated this new, unique man. He went into real estate, and found he was quite good. Selling was selling, after all, and Brian was built for that. Once in a while, they ran into one of the old gang, who inevitably ended their encounter frustrated that Brian still didn't remember them.

The only regret Brian had was regarding his biological son, Gus. But, as he had given up his paternal rights long before the amnesia, and unfortunately did not automatically feel the paternal bond, he had to let it go. The child was happy and healthy and that was the most important thing. Having the experience of a father who was neither his legal parent, nor felt like a parent would not have been beneficial in any way. He had to let it go.

Brian would never regain his memories; he'd reconciled himself to that. The loss of a historical map of his life was devastating in the beginning of this strange journey. As time passed, he realized the recollections others had about Brian Kinney - those he was so absurdly jealous of at one point - were mere chimeras, shadows of a man who never really existed. At least he never really existed fully. The amnesia had caused him to forget who Brian Kinney had felt the need to be, yet at the same time, he had found the man Brian Kinney was meant to be.

All in all, not a bad life. Not a bad fucking life at all.

*Title taken from an article by Daniel Levitin, The Atlantic. http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2012/12/amnesia-and-the-self-that-remains-when-memory-is-lost/266662/