Somewhere in the South Pacific...
 
Too late. The current swirled; rough fingers dragged at him, pulling him deeper into the silent darkness. His eyes closed; after the terror of the last few hours he was strangely peaceful. Too late. My name, he thought disinterestedly, is Justin Taylor, and I'm dying. The hand, however, was arrogantly insistent. Pain ripped through his scalp as the fingers tangled into his blonde locks and pulled fiercely, jolting him back from the strange world of exhaustion he inhabited. He stuck out a fist, gripping the arm with all his strength, pulling himself and his rescuer farther into the depths of murky churning turquoise. More pain. Half dragged, half propelled by the sudden desire for survival. The waves slapped into his open mouth, and he choked, ready to seep back into the peace below. Too late. But, a man's face suddenly appeared close to his, gripping his shoulder. Pain. The rescuer mouthed something he couldn't hear above the crashing waves and dreadful sound of the sinking ship behind him. Mindlessly, he grabbed for the arm once again, dragging them both down. Too late. Justin's hair was plastered to his face with blood and seawater, the strange man with broad shoulders supporting him against the buffeting waves. The man's hand moved toward him once again and this time the descent into darkness was so sudden that he had no chance to cry out or struggle against it. Too late.
Justin moaned softly as he remembered what happened. After the short plane trip, he boarded a small ship to get back to the states; a beacon of flaming timbers, sinking into a churning ocean. What had happened? He couldn't remember.
Involuntarily, his hands went to touch his face, and he was startled to find they were bandaged from the palms to the wrists, leaving only the red, swollen fingers bare. Justin stretched his arms straight out in front of him, the better to view them, freezing there with fear, as the cabin door suddenly opened. A man entered and stood framed in the arc of his bandaged hands, like the subject of an artist's portrait. The portrait of a pirate. He was not a comforting sight. To begin with, he seemed to completely fill the cabin, his height forcing him to duck his head as he passed through the doorway. He looked taller than he actually was from the already cramped cabin. He was carrying a towel over his arm and a bowl of water. Some instinct caused Justin to shrink from him, curling himself into a tight ball against the pillows. The man saw the gesture and paused, the fingers of his hands balled into a fist. Automatically, it seemed his stance stiffened into a defensiveness of a soldier in unknown terrain. Eyes of a brilliant black, examined him carefully from beneath a crop of wild, dark curls. One of his eyebrows quirked upward in silent interrogation. He was being studied, he realized by a pirate. He was tanned a deep mahogany by the elements, and had a patch of wiry hair on his chin. If Justin wasn't so scared, he would have laughed. A pirate. All that was missing was an earring and the cutlass between his teeth. Unexpectedly, the vile man threw back his head and laughed, his smile white against his dark hair. Justin realized that the small frog croak he had just heard was his own voice. He made a small movement, tucking his feet firmly against his body. The man ignored his further retreat, dumping the bowl on a small table. He then shockingly placed one long dirty hand on his forehead. He jerked back, but the man moved his fingers of the boy's head with impersonal interest. 
" So you are finally coherent. You've been tossing about in a high fever for the last three days. How do you feel?" The question was abrupt. " I..." Justin paused, uncertain how to answer. However, a lifetime of his country club upbringing, led him to say, " I thank you. I am well." His voice was weak and hoarse, and the man frowned, suddenly straightening to his full height, his arms crossed. Justin flinched at the unexpected demand of his next words. " How much do you remember." Too much. He remembered too much. He wanted to sink back beneath the blanket and return to the oblivion of sleep, but the unspoken command was inescapable. " I remember you, he heard himself say. " You were the man on the raft." Justin already knew he hated the man on the raft.
And why not? He had made him do things he had fought against. He sheltered him in the shadow of his body when the sun seemed to burn the very flesh of his bones. He had shouted him awake when he would have given his mortal soul for the chance to close his eyes and drift into sleep. He had kept him lashed to the timbers by crushing him beneath him as he resisted the waves' efforts to wash them into the ocean. Justin remembered. He ached for...Brian Fucking Kinney. Too late...Tbc.