Disclaimer: I do not own any of the Queer As Folk characters in this story. They belong to Showtime and Cowlips. No copyright infringement is at all intended and no money will be made.

The basis of the idea came from the show 'Finding Carter.' I thought it would be interesting to see how the Queer As Folk characters handled a child being kidnapped from their little family and then reemerging 10 years later.

Enjoy!

Dylan Tanner wakes up on March 15th with absolutely no idea that his life will be forever changed. No clue that the lie he's been living for the past 9 years is about to close in on itself. He's wishes he could've known, he would've marked it on his calendar, Dooms day, the day when everything becomes fucked up and screwed over. The day the people that matter the most to him suffer and die and it's all because he had absolutely no clue.

If he had known, he would've done things differently. He's sure of it.

It pisses him off that the last day with his family is so fucking typical, no different than Monday or Wednesday for the most part. He wakes up late, so late that his tired single mother, who has too many things to do in the morning has to come and wake him and Cody up for school, like their children.

He steals the shower from Rachel, even though she already had her towel and clothes in the bathroom first. When she begs from outside the door, "Please don't use up all the hot water," he does it anyway because he's in a really shitty mood. It was like his body knew that this was going to be a terrible day. So he sits on the toilet stool after showering and watches as the steam rises in the bathroom until there's no more warm water left. It gives off a calming effect.

After getting dressed in something uninteresting and non-noteworthy, he finds Mattie and Shannon in the kitchen making waffles with the toaster. His mother is staring at the raggedy refrigerator door with a frown. Papers are covered all over it with small letters but big stamps that say, 'PAST DUE.' Dylan knows any day now, something they need will be cut off.

He's about to snatch up a waffle when his mother turns around and spots him. She smiles at him in greeting but her overly lined face says her mind is on other things. Much more stressful things. She tells him that Rachel told her that he was able to walk Mattie home from school today. Though Dylan doesn't have any plans after school, he never has plans after school, he still gets pissed because he should have been asked first. Instead of getting mad at his mother, he blames Rachel. Obviously this is her form of revenge. Volunteer him for something he absolutely does not want to do. So he switches Rachel's packed sandwich, whose lactose intolerant, with Shannon's, his 11 year old sisters, but he makes sure not to disturb the color coded zip locked candies they hand out to their friends.

Rachel comes into the kitchen a couple minutes later looking like she's about to go to work on Wall Street and reviewing her notecards. She stands next to their mother and they couldn't look more different. Rachel in her world domination attire and his mother in her wrinkled Walmart uniform and wet hair. No one would ever believe that they are truly mother and daughter. Cody trails in behind her with wildly dyed bed hair and the same clothes he wore yesterday. Cody could've picked up Mattie, he's the oldest, Dylan thinks bitterly. As far as he knows, Cody and his loser friends never do anything interesting anyways after school.

Their mother tells Cody that he needs to come home early so that they can make another batch. Everyone's eyes stray to the refrigerator door covered in past due notices and clutch their packed lunch boxes like it's their ticket to surviving, which in a way it is. Cody nods, but Dylan and everyone else in the house know that he won't show up. He's the most unreliable person in their family.

Cody skates to school, mostly because he's too cool to ride with the rest of the family but also because their mother's 2000 Toyota Camry can only fit 4 people excluding the driver. Rachel always sits in the front while Dylan, Shannon and Mattie are cramped in the stained back seats. The only entertaining part of the ride is that every time Mattie starts singing along with the radio, Shannon and Dylan take turns hitting him in the back of his head or pinching his sides to shut him up.

Rachel gets dropped off first, though her high school is much farther away, because she has a very important presentation to practice for. She always has some very important assignment or test or presentation which is why she always gets dropped off first. Mom and Mattie wish her luck but Shannon and Dylan remain quiet and roll their eyes. The idea of Rachel doing bad on anything is ridiculous. No one is as much as a know-it-all and brown-noser as his oldest sister.

The kids in the back are dropped off next. Their schools are connected. So Mattie heads off to his class while Dylan and Shannon make their way to the middle school building after their mom reminds Dylan of his big brother duties. He doesn't even say goodbye to her or to his brother and sister when he leaves. He really wishes he would've now.

In Dylan's opinion school is a complete waste of time. Most of the subjects don't matter. English class stopped being relevant after he learned how to read and write. Will knowing the exact dates of when the civil war was fought really matter in his life if he gets a job as a grocer or a plumber? One time when Dylan and Shannon were going through Cody's and Rachel's things, Dylan found some piece of shit homework assignment buried in Cody's closest about the history of the shitty town they lived in. Why anyone would want to know anything other than how to get out of this hell hole, is a real head scratcher.

Mostly his class time consists of watching Mary from afar, at his locker he spies on her until it's time to go back to class, he passes notes with Shawn and Eric, eats lunch with his sister and his friends in the cafeteria, hands out candies and read's comic's during English, History, Spanish and Gym. Before he knows it a whole day passes by and the only relevant information he was able to obtain was from his science and math classes.

Shawn, Eric and Dylan go to pick up Mattie and they walk home together. Shawn and Eric live a couple streets over from him and hate walking home by themselves. Their small and easy prey, Dylan would know. He was there, hiding behind a tree, when his brother and his friends beat the shit out of Shawn and Eric and took their things, a year ago. Since Dylan befriended the small guys, no one messes with them. Although he's only a few inches taller than his friends and lanky, he's scrappy as hell in a fight.

When they get home, Mattie starts working on his homework at the kitchen table. Dylan instead heads to bed and goes to sleep. Having only two relevant classes' means having a ridiculously low amount of homework assignments. He doesn't wake back up until dinner time.

At 9pm is when everything goes to shit. Dinner has been ate, the dishes washed and the homework checked over and Cody is still not home. Dylan's mom is visibly pissed. She runs around the house with a Scooby doo night shirt on and her apron tied around her waist as she makes her way back and forth to the window and to the home phone, to check if he's called. When the clock strikes 10, Dylan and the rest of his siblings are sent off to bed. Rachel, in place of Cody, goes to the basement with mom to cook.

What happened next was entirely his fault. It was Dylan who got out of bed at 10:30 pm, who rushed to Shannon's room and told her Frankenstein would be on at 11pm. It was Dylan who was being so loud that he woke up Mattie, who then begged to watch TV with them. Dylan could have sent Mattie to bed but instead Shannon tells him to do 100 jumping jacks and only then will he be able to watch the movie. And by some miracle, his 7 year old brother, pulls it off.

Then Mattie collapses in a crumpled mess afterwards on their gray and disgusting carpet. He cries for Shannon or Dylan to get him water because he's too small to reach the sink and the cups are all in the top cupboards but they laugh at him. Now Dylan wishes he wasn't so much of an asshole but he ignores his brother and heads off to his room to find his Frankenstein comic and Shannon goes to the bathroom. Right when Dylan's about to snatch up his book from the bookshelf, there's a loud bang and then everything goes black.

He really wishes he would've done things differently.

Author comment: I hope you enjoyed the first chapter. Please give feedback! :D 2nd chapter will be available next week.

Here's a little preview:

"Gus, baby, please wake up! I can't lose you after I just got you! Please baby, pull through."

"You are going wake up and be completely okay. Do you hear me sweetie? Mama and Mommie want you to wake up and be okay."

"Please baby!"