[ Although Tanim and Daren exist in hundreds, if not thousands, of different storylines spanning who knows how many genres, settings, and time periods, there’s one I consider the “main” or dominant storyline. This one has been around the longest, is the most established, and is the one which I write about most often. I decided since I refer to different parts of this storyline so much I ought to give my readers a basic outline of the whole story. ]

First, a brief sketch of Tanim and Daren’s lives before they meet. Tanim is born the eldest son of an affluent family steeped in the rules and trappings of high society. He is raised with the understanding that he will follow in his father’s footsteps and eventually take over as president of the company which his father himself built. Tanim begins his training from a young age and is in every way the obedient, proper son – that is, until in his late teens he begins to develop alarming, inappropriate desires. He feels a near constant longing to surrender himself that is at once sexual and yet transcends physical need and becomes something almost spiritual, an all-encompassing impulse to give every part of himself to another. Living with such a shameful secret becomes unbearable, and when Tanim’s father dies while his son is in his early twenties, Tanim chooses to flee the city and cut off all contact with his family instead of entering into the business. Ostensibly this is to protect his loved ones from any public humiliation should his proclivities ever become known, but it’s really to free him from his own responsibilities.

Daren, only a few years Tanim’s junior, leads a far different life from his high society counterpart. However, as Tanim (and therefore the reader) never learns the whole story, I’m not going to give it away here. Suffice it to say, experiences and circumstances in Daren’s childhood leave him emotionally scarred and physically damaged, so withdrawn from the world he barely bothers to function beyond immediate necessity. He is a cold, uncaring man who wants nothing and gives even less, who long lost the ability to fend off the nightmares of his past and now lives with their constant torment.

Tanim’s self-imposed exile to a city far from his own will eventually bring their worlds together. When they meet in that same city some years later, Tanim in his mid-thirties and Daren his early thirties, both are miserable yet unable, or unwilling, to change their situations on their own. For all that Tanim lives in a lavish penthouse apartment he has become a wreck and a recluse, spending half his time drowning his guilt in alcohol and sleeping pills, the other half in the arms of anonymous lovers. Daren, meanwhile, calls a dismal basement apartment home, or at least residence, and is too physically and mentally unstable to hold a job. They cross paths at a local coffee shop, though it’s Tanim who notices Daren, not the other way around. He keeps his distance for a while, yet finally manages to earn Daren’s trust enough to strike up a strange sort of friendship.

Over the next several months their relationship develops, both unwilling to admit to the other that they may want more than mere friendship. However, eventually Daren’s physical condition begins to deteriorate, as it does periodically. Not wanting Tanim to realize how precarious his situation is, Daren decides to end their acquaintanceship by abruptly cutting off contact with him. Predictably, this doesn’t go well. While Daren, unable to care for himself alone, slowly worsens, Tanim tries to numb his concern, confusion, and hurt with his usual mixture of alcohol and soporifics.

Things take a turn for the much worse when a week or two later Daren returns home to find he has been evicted from his apartment. With nowhere else to go, and still refusing to face Tanim in such a condition, he ends up on the street. When Tanim finds him a few nights later in an alley near his own apartment building, Daren is so feverish he’s senseless and nearly unconscious. Tanim manages to get Daren up to his apartment and nurses him back to health as best he can over the course of the next weeks. Eventually all of the unspoken, messy feelings between them come out and they decide to start an actual romantic relationship.

Barring the bumps expected from two damaged men trying to sustain a functioning relationship, their bond continues to strengthen and for the next year or so they’re relatively happy – or at least much less miserable than if they were alone. That is, of course, until Daren’s health begins once more to deteriorate, and with it his emotional stability. This time there is no nursing him back to health, though; he is on the downward slide now and all Tanim can do is care for Daren as his body slowly fails. After Daren’s death Tanim is left utterly bereft and lacks the will to fight such heartache. Succumbing to grief and loneliness, he follows his lover soon after.

[ If you actually read all of that, holy shit. Thank you, and I’m sorry. That really is the super super short version. ]

Some aspects cannot be exorcised from the basic essence no matter the number of iterations, alterations, reincarnations undergone to reach the current state. Bound within the spiraled libraries of sleeping cells the original coding still remains preserved, latent possibility awaiting a will to unlock and unleash. I can see that potential in the darkness of his eyes, which once reached far deeper inside and yet still drew more into itself in mindless consumption; I can hear that potential in his voice, which recalls even now the ash and desolation which spread from his footsteps and poured out in each breath; I can feel that potential in his very presence, in the stillness of one who has seen and accepted his part in the end already, who has no concept of desire or drive and acts only to fulfill his purpose. That which was created to destroy cannot be turned to something other than its original function. As fire is made to burn, as the blade is made to pierce, so he remains a thing of waste and ruin even now, though on a more subtle scale. Yet you must admit there is a fitting beauty in the realization of his purpose, an elegant similarity in the equality of mass annihilation and the slow, orchestrated devastation of a single heart.

[ If you think the current version(s) of Daren already suggest a man at times not entirely stable or pleasant, you should have seen his very first incarnation way back in the beginning. He’s a kitten now compared to that. ]

To understand the muse completely you must be willing to relinquish all claims to yourself. First your body dissolves, flesh and bone breaking down to scattered atoms which sink into the other’s form as if superimposed upon their own miniature solar systems. Then your conscious mind submits its individuality to embrace another’s and your own thoughts, desires, and memories are lost to a foreign stream of perception and reaction. Finally your subconscious mind concedes, the very core of your spirit extinguished before the will of a greater flame until even your name is lost. You surrender all physical and psychological identity to the other in order to become them completely, albeit temporarily. Their body, their mind, their spirit are all yours for a time and in that time you understand everything they ever were and ever will be. It is only after, when you have returned to your own mortal form, that you realize no amount of words can adequately reconstruct this other existence.

It’s not time.

Daren turns his gaze away from the sleeping man and down to the blade which rests easy in his hand. “Maybe I want to break the rules for once.”

Do you?

For a moment he stares at the knife, almost as if wondering how it has come once again to his palm, then back to Tanim’s relaxed form. “No,” he concedes with a sigh. “I don’t have it in me right now. I’m tired of watching him die.”

You don’t have much choice.

His fingers twitch around the weapon. “Why not? It’s my doing, isn’t it? So what happens if I just… refuse? What happens if he doesn’t die this time?”

Death finds a way.

“You find a way,” he hisses, lips twisting into a bitter snarl.

I only write the story. I have no control. You know the rules as well as I do: no happy ending.

“I don’t want a happy ending anymore,” Resignation and weariness dull Daren’s words. “I just want an ending. I just want finality. Wouldn’t it be better if we both just… stopped? If we finally ended this awful cycle?”

Would an end to both your pain be worth losing him forever?

“…I suppose not,” He tosses the knife down with a rueful smile and reaches out to graze a finger along Tanim’s jaw. “I’m far too selfish for that.”

If the mind is like a house, full of hallways full of doors beyond which are rooms full of doors beyond which are hallways full of doors, what must it be like to exist within? To be one of the muses, characters, specters, revenants, fictions trapped with no physical form to call their own? They are not completely free to wander, after all; not all doors open to their touch nor do all realms permit entry. Do they put their palms to the unyielding wood and wonder what memories or fantasies lay beyond that will never be theirs? A better childhood, a different future, a chance to be someone or something else, if only temporarily? Or do they avert their eyes as they pass by, refusing to entertain such a futile dream? Not all things are possible, even in the mind, and so the spirits must remain themselves even here. We are only who we are.