Collide - Part One - Chapter One

Collide - Part One - Chapter One
Collide
Written for NaNoWriMo 2005.
FANDOM: Queer as Folk
PAIRING: Brian/Justin

AUTHOR: yoursweater
RATING/TIMELINE: R/Alternate Universe
SPOILERS: No
ARCHIVE: Ridiculously
LJ ARCHIVE: All
SUMMARY: This isn’t a game -- but they play it like it is.

part one: nails for breakfast.
chapter one: the urban legend.

He wakes up in the middle of an urban legend.
A scenario as classic as bright red lipstick scrawled on a hotel room window after a one night stand; as traditional as the teenage girl’s slumber party with an affirmed psycho hiding beneath her bed, licking her fingers, for he’s taken the place of her beloved dog.
He wakes up in the middle of an urban legend, and he has no idea where he is.
A gasp pierces through the otherwise stale air and he cringes, eyes widening until he’s sure he can feel his eye balls close to popping out of their sockets. His fingers grip the edge of the bath tub he’s laying in, clammy body submerged in almost melted ice cubes and tap water that he suspects was poured cold. He feels the electricity buzzing through his brain.
The walls around him are dismal and dilapidated, obviously old and rusted -- probably from the outside in. He moves one foot and the water he’s sitting in splashes over his leg, over his bare skin and the rest of his nude body. He gasps again, shocked that the small movement causes his spine to twist and knot, heating up the curved line, the sharp pain traveling over the middle of his back.
“What the fuck…” He breathes, eyes closing, a sudden and unaccounted for wave of sleep threatening to take him over. He grips the edge of the bath tub with water wrinkled finger tips and bites his bottom lip -- bites it so hard it bleeds -- bites it until he knows that he won’t fall back asleep now that his brain has been distracted with another unnecessary yet immediate sensation.
There’s nothing in the room he lays in except for his body and the bath tub, and a sink that looks as though the taps haven’t been turned on in years. He’d bet ten, maybe even twenty.
He blinks again, and the movement is slow, both of his eyes almost sticking closed with the sleep that the rest of his body desperately wants to claim.
Drugged. He thinks vaguely, head beginning to nod forward, moving rapidly to fall down, until the bottom of his chin is pressed flat against his own chest. The movement jerks him back awake when another jolt, a sharper jolt than the one before it, travels down his back. He snaps upright and almost cries from the pain that his body is suddenly racked with.
He knows there’s no one in the room other than him. He knows this for sure, because he can see all four walls, and the small door that leads to what he hopes to believe is outside. He inhales and exhales and the air smells musty and metallic, like blood and antiseptic solution.
And suddenly the pain and confusion begin to turn to panic. He finds himself desperately trying to get out of the bath tub, desperate despite the throbbing that races through his bones. He almost gets a grip just good enough to get out, but suddenly his footing is lost and he slips, his body slamming down against the yellow, once white porcelain.
A sob breaks through his panicked breathing, his fingers shaking as he brings his hands up for inspection. Wrists. His wrists. The skin on one is red and looks as though he’s been restrained, but the other, the left one, the left one looks as though it did the last time he saw it.
And that’s when he notices it, written on the inside of his right arm. The numbers 110.
110, he thinks, re-reading the number. 110.
There’s no connection that clicks, none at all, and the panic turns to desperation as he looks around the encompassing room once more. He knows the time that has elapsed since he woke up has been mere minutes, but inside the safety of his own head, in the back of his brain, it feels as though it’s been hours.
“Fuck.” He whispers again, voice cracking. He barely recognizes it.
Fingers gripping the edge of the bath tub, he tries to struggle his way out once more. The drugs have softened his system, weakened his muscles, and in the end, he can’t do much more than fall back against the near-cracked porcelain again.
His eyes begin to drift closed once more, and this time, he does nothing to stop it.

…

Sirens.
The word knocks against the skin of his forehead, a tiny hand full of six letters rapping and rapping near his temple, but he barely registers the idea of the word, the sound. Sirens, he tries to think once more, tries to comprehend the idea of the word. Sirens.
His eyes blink and open and close, a pattern playing out in rapid stance, but he can barely focus on the lights that reflect on the wall opposite him -- red and blue stripes of color that stream through the small window above the war colored sink.
Sirens, he thinks again, and feels his heart begin to pound inside his chest, rattling his ribcage back and forth whenever he breathes in. Sirens.
Later he’ll be told that it was the police who broke in after getting an anonymous tip on a drug bust. Someone will tell him that he had been so close to death when the cops found him, that he probably doesn’t remember a single moment of it.
He’ll be told that at first the police thought that he was involved, thought the little blond boy with the streaks of blood on his arms and chest was party to a European drug bust. A social worker will explain to him that when the police saw the tubes coming from his back, that’s when they knew. That’s when they called an ambulance, and that’s when they called the life support team.
People will tell Justin a lot of things, and people will ask Justin a lot of questions. Questions that Justin isn’t even sure he has a real answer for.
“What do you last remember?” They’ll ask, and it will be a woman, her name soft and fit to perfection like the cotton t-shirt under her blazer. “Do you remember crossing the American border?”
Justin will shake his head and try to ignore the German officials as they mill around the office, glancing at him over the rim of their coffee cups as though he’s the enemy, as though they’re trying to make at least a little bit of sense as to how this American kid ended up on the receiving end of their questioning table.
They’ll take pictures of the number 110 written on the inside of his arm - and the social worker, Janice Bennett, (Justin can only refer to people of authority with their full name, ma’am), she’ll explain that 110 is the German equivalent of the North American 911.
Janice will tell him some things, some things, but not everything. Officials will take shot upon shot, angle after angle of the wound on his back -- cut and sewn back to perfection.
He’ll view images of the room that the police tell him he was detained in for thirty some odd hours, and he won’t remember a thing.

…

November 1st, 2005 - Berlin, Germany

She catches him in the hallway, between the coffee room and her own office. Hands him a manila envelope with ‘Justin Taylor’ scribbled on the side in black ink pen, and manages a half breathless, “Here.”
A smile that twists his lips up at the corners crosses his face as he pulls the already thick envelope from her grip, flips it around so he can read the words scrawled on the front cover.
“What’s this?” He asks her, handing his coffee over in exchange. She holds it with one hand with her pinky sticking out, and tugs down the hem of her dress with the other, only half trying to get it at back down to her knees.
She smirks and tells him, “It’s your newest case.”
A crooked eyebrow and he tries to peek through the edges of the folder -- forfeits after only one try, because it’s dangerously close to opening and spilling all over the floor, courtesy of a lame one-handed grip as the other clutches a brief case to his side.
“Who is it?” He asks, glancing over the nametag once more. When he doesn’t get an answer, he looks over to his assistant -- knots his eyebrows in annoyance when he realizes that she isn’t listening to him in the least. “Adeline,” He snaps.
She stops watching the two co-workers getting dangerously close in the door of the coffee room just down the hall and glances up at him, offering a crooked smile of her own, still two steps away from a real apology.
When she doesn’t answer, he repeats, “Who. Is he?”
Her mouth drops open like she can’t believe he doesn’t know yet, and he’s waiting for her to squeal… or do something equally unnecessary and woman-like.
“You won’t believe this.” Adeline begins, nodding toward the other end of the hall. He rolls his eyes but follows her anyways as she walks down the narrow hallway, glancing in each office as they pass. “It hasn’t broken to the media yet, but when it does, shit. It’s going to blow up something fierce.”
He nods and tries to look in the folder once more, craning his neck and knotting his eyebrows. He manages to flip the pages through the air just long enough to catch a glimpse of a photograph -- a boy fills up the cheap polaroid frame.
“He’s this hustler from Seattle, right?” She whispers, leaning in close so no one else gets an earful of the obviously still quiet case. “But he woke up in Germany, this little nowhere city just out of Kreuzberg. It’s barely on the map.”
Raising one eyebrow, he asks, “So?”
“So,” Adeline presses, repeats like she’s doing a shampoo cycle, and then squeezes his forearm with the hand that isn’t holding the cup of on-its-way-to-being-cold coffee. “He woke up missing his kidney! It’s like a goddamn urban legend!”
This sign goes off in his head. This huge neon orange and yellow sign. It lights up and begins to blink, shooting words off that are designed to make his brain understand how huge of a case this is. How huge this case could be. The media loves nothing more than a scandal, especially right now, form fitted to go alongside their natural disasters and terrorist attacks.
“No shit.” He laughs, and if he were the type of person to gape, maybe he would do that too. He’s getting desperate to look at this file, though -- so much so, that he almost hands his brief case over to Adeline. “How old’s the kid?”
They’re getting dangerously close to reaching the conference room where the meeting is scheduled to be held, but she doesn’t hesitate as she leans in and whispers, “Sixteen. Can you fucking believe that?”
He can’t. He remembers being sixteen -- remembers being every single one of those numbers -- and his early teenage years didn’t exactly consist of falling asleep in one continent and waking up in another. They were made of cheesy puppet shows on TV, episodes that he’ll still watch on repeat at four in the morning if he can find them, but only if he’s on an acid trip.
A quote that he remembers in pieces begins to march through his mind at decibel level as he glances down at the file he holds, eyes tracing over the client name once more. A quote from a children’s show he used to watch, a show he hasn’t seen in years but still remembers in bright colors and freakish hand puppets. It’s this quote that fills his mind.
I just got the strangest feeling, as if my life would never be the same when I turned this corner, He thinks, reciting the words to himself, and he can’t remember who said it or what the character looked like, but he remembers the voice. Adeline points him toward the usual conference room, the largest conference room, and reaches down to take his briefcase. …Gosh, that’s dumb.
“Good luck.” She whispers like he needs it, and then he’s pushing his elbow against the door and walking through. Adeline smiles through his body and to the client sitting at the table inside, his small entourage accompanying him.
When the kid doesn’t return the sentiment, she smirks, takes her boss’ coffee and briefcase, and quietly closes the door behind her.
“Mr. Taylor, I presume?” Her boss asks, raising his eyebrows at the skeleton inspired figure sitting in one of the chairs at the stainless steel table. The blond bag of bones nods and watches as the two people, older people, that are flanking him stand up, all manners and pin pointed gratitude as they shake hands and offer tight smiles.
The skeleton uncurls himself and offers a loose hand and downcast eyes at the businessman standing above him, the businessman who shakes it immediately and then steps back behind his side of the conference table, huge and already stacked with papers and Adeline-scribbled memos.
“Brian Kinney.” He introduces himself, finally flipping the kid’s folder open in both of his hands. A thin pile of photos spread their way over the inside cover, pictures printed from digital cameras of the crime scene, and the once-fresh wound on Justin Taylor’s back.
He closes the folder abruptly after he sees the first angry red marking, and looks over at the three people sitting on the opposite side of the table. A woman, a man, and the boy.
“Forgive me for being so blunt,” Brian starts, though his voice shows no more remorse than it usually does, “How long has it been since the accident?” He questions, dropping down into his own too expensive chair. The seat spins at the movement, and he uses his legs to steady himself. Pauses to feel around for a pen, and curse Adeline for taking his briefcase when he doesn’t immediately find one.
After a few moments, when it becomes apparent that the boy won’t speak, the woman does it for him.
“The police believe it happened on October 15th. They found his body on the 16th.”
Brian raises his eyebrows at her and smirks, replies, “Well he’s not dead yet, is he?”
She pulls her top lip between her teeth and looks appropriately embarrassed at the smug expression sitting across from her. Brian breaks their stare to scribble down the too short timeline on the front of the tanned folder, then glances up and looks across the desk with an even gaze, an even gaze directed to Justin. He raises his eyebrows, and though the blond doesn’t say a word, he holds the expression with him -- his eyes a shade too tired and older than they should be, but still so fucking challenging.
“We thank you for taking on the case with such short notice.” The woman has begun to continue, and at her words Brian glances up, truly unaware of who she is thanks to an official lack of introduction. She’s holding a US Government issued clipboard in her lap, and suddenly it occurs to him that she must be the kid’s social worker.
Shaking his head, Brian leans back in his chair and looks across at the man sitting with them - chief of the police force that must’ve found the “body”, Brian figures. He recognizes the officer’s face from a few cases prior to this one, most of which were before his time at this firm.
“American lawyers are hard to come by in Germany.” The social worker continues, touching the blood blue clipboard in her lap. Justin shifts awkwardly, and forces a grimace down when he moves his body into what he must imagine will be a more comfortable position. It turns out to be not that comfortable at all.
Brian shakes his head again and glances down at the two dates on the front of the folder beneath him. He glances up once more, and says, “I’m not American.”