The second night, when the worst has passed and I no longer think I may lose Daren, he’s struck by another nightmare. There’s little I can do to ease the attack but murmur senseless comforts as I hold him close, afraid that otherwise he’ll hurt himself in his thrashing. I doubt he’s even aware of my touch or voice but I can’t bear to let him suffer alone. When he’s well enough to care for himself again he’ll have a choice to stay or go, but for now I’m all he has to keep the fever from taking him completely. When the terror finally subsides and the thin, feverish figure in my arms stills, I lay him gently back in bed. He shudders and turns into the pillow yet never wakes. It’s better that way; I know I’ve crossed a line, invaded a privacy Daren holds sacred, and the less he remembers of this, the better.

I’m at the door when Daren speaks, his voice a hoarse rasp. “What do you want from me, Tanim?” The question closes my throat and for a moment I can barely breathe, let alone speak. Swallowing down a hard lump of emotions I don’t even want to touch right now, I turn my head enough to glimpse Daren’s pale outline in the darkness. Even though his expression is lost in shadow I can feel the weight of his regard. What do I want? How can he ask me that? How can he expect me to answer truthfully? Not for the first time I wonder how much Daren suspects, if I’m as transparent as I feel. Is that why he cut off contact weeks ago?

“I don’t want anything from you, Daren,” I finally manage to mutter, trying to at once hide the quaver in my voice and feign a lightness I can’t feel. Daren makes a weak sound that might be a laugh or might simply be another ragged cough. The rattling in his lungs is worrisome but I have other concerns right now. “You won’t ask anything of me, you mean,” he corrects. “Wanting is different. What do you want from me?”

Even delirious and half-starved, he’s still a clever bastard. For just a second I allow myself to admit, at least silently, everything I’ve wanted from Daren for so long: not only friendship but companionship, love, intimacy. I want to surrender my body and heart and soul to him. I want to be his, and for Daren to be mine. I want so much I can never have and so I reply with careful diplomacy, “I only want what you would offer me willingly.” It’s as close to the truth as I can come without revealing myself. I would never ask anything more of him, no matter what I long for.

“Tanim…” Daren’s sigh is heavy with exhaustion and something close to disappointment, and I hate myself for the way I shiver upon hearing my name on his breath. “Please,” I know my voice trembles as I turn away but I’m too tired to hold it steady any longer. “Don’t make me say anything more.” As I shut the door behind myself I pray the fever burns this memory from Daren’s mind. I’m not ready to bare my heart to him when the revelation may turn him from me once and for all. He may suspect but until I say the words aloud I can pretend nothing has changed and I can keep this man in my life a few days longer.

We don’t fuck tonight, or even touch. There’s a gap between us in bed that our bodies can’t seem to warm and a silence I’m unwilling to break first. I’m lying on my back when Daren finally speaks, his own turned to me so his voice sounds softer than usual.

“I wouldn’t stop you,”

 “Stop me?” I’m not sure I want to know what he means but the question comes out before I can think of something better to say. “From leaving,” he supplies. “If you left, I wouldn’t stop you.”

“This is my apartment,” I point out, hoping a little sarcasm can shift the conversation away from what promises to be a wearying discussion. But, “You know what I mean,” Daren sighs, unwilling to honor my attempt at levity. The mattress shifts as he rolls onto his back and whether he means it to or not, his arm comes to rest in the space between our bodies. I resist the urge to trace those fine bones with my fingers as he continues in that flat, steady voice of his, “You can end this any time, Tanim. It’s okay. I’ll honor your choice.”

Okay? It’s okay for me to leave him? It’s okay to abandon this fragile life we’ve forged together simply because things get tough? The thought of returning to the lonely, empty life I barely endured before we met twists my stomach in knots, to say nothing of what Daren would do if he was suddenly on his own again. I’m not sure Daren wants to be touched but I at least need the comfort of warm skin against mine so I lay my hand over his and swear, “You know I wouldn’t. I won’t ever leave you. Why would you even say that?”

“It’s a way out,” he explains, fingers motionless beneath my touch, “that’s all. An easy escape. If the time comes,” though I know he means when the time comes, “just end things. I’ll understand. Don’t feel you have to stay on my account.” Daren’s asking me – no, telling me – to get out before it’s too late to spare myself the heartache. He talks as if I’m only here out of pity or some twisted sense of obligation, as if my love is restricted by caveats and qualifiers. The insinuation would hurt if I thought he actually believed me capable of such disloyalty; instead, it hurts only because it shows how little faith he has in himself.

Fuck this evasive, passive talk. I loop my arms around Daren and drag him into a too tight embrace as I both promise and threaten, “You’re stuck with me, darling. Get used to it.” I expect Daren to twist away at this brazen invasion of his personal space but instead he buries his face against my chest. “I’ll keep pushing,” he mutters, fingers clutching at my body in counterpoint to the feeble warning. “Don’t worry,” I reassure the man I have sworn myself to a hundred times, and would gladly swear so another thousand, “I’m stubborn.” Though it may be my imagination, I think I can feel the curve of a bittersweet smile on Daren’s lips as he replies, “I know you are.”

Sometimes I suspect I use my hunger for touch and submission like a lightning rod, that without such an easy target I would merely find some other reason to condemn myself. It’s like an impulse to find flaws and faults, to punish, to play the martyr, and even before I commit the sin I’m already paying penance. Maybe that’s just who I am – who I’ll always be. Like those people who can’t control the urge to pick at their skin until they bleed, or rip at their hair until it tears off in clumps, I can’t seem to stop scratching at my heart and soul and psyche until I’m shredded inside. It’s not enough to bleed from a single wound; once one weeps blood and rot I move on to dig open another, desperate to keep my fingers busy so they won’t reach instead for a bottle or a pill or the heat of a stranger’s flesh.

In the beginning I was far too shy and tangled up inside to ever meet Daren’s eyes, so at first I just watched his hands. I fell in love with them before I ever knew his name and long before I summoned the courage to strike up some sort of stilted, stumbling conversation. I’d sit with my coffee and watch from across the café as he raised his own cup to his lips, the cuff of his sleeve pulling back just enough to reveal a sliver of thin, pale wrist. I felt like a voyeur but I couldn’t help myself; even that small glimpse sent a thrill down my spine and I couldn’t look away until I’d memorized every graceful curve and line. I’d watch those slender fingers slide around the cup and imagine them twisting through my hair, brushing over my mouth, digging into my skin as they pulled me close. I envied that cup for the sensations it could never appreciate yet for which I longed every night.

I was obsessed, I’ll admit. But I was right, too. Daren’s hands were certainly worth pining for all those hours and days and weeks. Now that they’re mine, or I theirs I suppose, withheld desire is merely foreplay. Of course, every second and minute is still torture – just one I’m willing to suffer.

 
[ On an unrelated but related note, I'm in such a hard core slump that I kind of want to just crawl into a hole and die. Uurrrrgghhh. ]

Like the moon Daren is in constant motion, always longing to leave, to go dark and disappear. I can feel him awake at my side in the night, rigid with the effort to remain in bed. He wants to run. He needs to run. I think on the surface he believes this impulse stems from the fact that it would be easier if he left, though I’m not sure for whom; me so I don’t have to bear his burdens or him so he can waste in peace. That isn’t the real reason, though, so I suppose it doesn’t really matter if the logic is flawed. I doubt Daren understands why he really longs to escape this life we share, but I do because I’ve succumbed to the same irrational desire. He needs to run because all his life he’s shut himself off from everything, become cold and unfeeling within, and now the safety gained from that withdrawal is no longer an option. Love forces vulnerability, requires submission to a greater force, and even when he retreats inside himself he’s never truly alone; there is a shard of my own heart within him now and no matter where he goes, no matter what he does, he cannot break free. That’s a terrifying concept, I know it is, and so I understand why he feels this compulsion to flee. And he may, one day. I may wake one morning to an empty bed, empty rooms, empty life. Yet even if that bleak morning does come I know he’ll return to me eventually, as the moon must always emerge from darkness to cold light. And when he does I’ll be here still, constant and unchanging as the sun.

His lips curl in a sneer as he pulls away, though I cannot tell if the disgust is born from my touch or his unwilling reaction. I know I should ask him what happened in his past to make even a simple caress cause such revulsion. It would help him, at least in the long run, to talk about it, to desensitize himself to the memories. I know firsthand the harder you fight some dark aspect of yourself the more it haunts you; yet face it, accept it, and you render it powerless. But I can’t bear to rip open his old wounds, infected and leaking though they may be. I swore to protect him, to be the one safe, stable, trustworthy aspect of his life. I’m not supposed to cause him agony or remind him of the traumas from which it seems he’ll never be free. If I force him to give voice to all those wretched memories then every time he looks to me they’ll surge back and I’ll become another nightmare, another revenant, another horror he flinches from in loathing. I know my fear is selfish but I spent so many years believing I was a monster – it would break me to truly become one in his eyes. I can’t risk that, even for him.

How is it possible to be both apathetic and ravenous? To feel at once hollow and full of hunger? I know I was not always this brute beast yet I cannot recall the man I might have been before. I am a thing of impulse and extremity, willingly suffering prolonged despair to grasp brief moments of furtive, illicit passion. Even then I’m never filled, though, never completed beyond that fleeting shudder of ecstasy. As sweat cools on my skin already that sense of peace and rightness is draining, and in its absence there remains nothing but aching emptiness. My body bends so easily to another’s will yet I have no power of my own to reign in the desire which drives me to such madness. How will I ever find peace when these baser demands supersede every other want and need?

[ I shouldn't love angsty Tanim, but I do. Oh god I do. ]

I felt no hesitation after that first time and when he drew me down by the fire I surrendered eagerly. Even in my wildest fantasies, numerous and varied as they were, I had never quite given myself leave to imagine he might really share this hunger, let alone act upon it with such intensity. Whatever aches and rug burns I suffered the next morning were worth it for the sight of Daren’s pale skin lit by the flame’s glow, his eyes glittering down at me like hot coals. He’d looked as wild and regal as a god of fire and burned me to ashes like one with lips that melted me, fingers that carved me, hips that pressed and molded me into a shape of his own desire. I had been wrong about him; so blessedly, wonderfully wrong. He was cold, yes, remote and reserved so much of the time, but he harbored a beast kin to my own and saw in me someone worth claiming. And so trembling, gasping, I gave anything he wanted and everything I am to this beautiful dark god. Afterward he chuckled, a sound deep in his throat that made me shiver, and held me as I caught my breath. “It’s different, isn’t it,” he said, a note of wonder and a wealth of meaning in his sparse words. I could only nod; my mouth was busy showing my own wordless thanks.

[ I haven’t written anything from Tanim’s point of view since September? Damn, boy, you gonna let Daren get all the attention? ]

I want to fuck you up; I want to break you down. I want to turn you on and suck you off. I want to loathe you and love you, deny you and fulfill you. Can’t you see it’s an honor, darling? I am this man because of you. I am this man for you. This is the proof of my devotion. I would never hurt someone I didn’t love, after all, and I would never surrender myself to someone who didn’t understand the significance of such submission. A body can be given a hundred times but the will within? That can only be given once, and never taken back.

[ This one has been sitting in my “remnants and fragments” file for a while (too long), so I figured it wasn’t meant to be expanded any further. That happens sometimes. ]

My lover laughs around a sneer, mocking the trembling in his hands, the night terror which has reduced him once again to this wretched state. “Which do you think will go first,” he asks, “my body or my mind?” From where he sits on the cold bathroom tile his gaze lifts, bleak and black, untouched by the cold laughter. “Shall we place bets on the nature of my demise? You would collect in the end no matter what.”

I start to open my mouth but can’t manage an answer; still reeling from the nightmare or not, Daren will sense a lie if I attempt one and detest my cowardice. Yet how can I admit to either of us that, knowing I must lose both, I find myself praying his body fails before his mind? I am more desensitized to the reek of blood on his breath than I am to the gleam of instability in his eyes. Instead of answering I can only shake my head and beg with weary patience, “What do you want from me?” Besides, of course, to push me away so he may die alone, as if mere distance will soften our separate agonies.

“I want you to be a hallucination,” For just a moment that dazed gaze sharpens, pierces me. “Or maybe you already are one…” His eyes narrow as if by concentrating hard enough he can glimpse frayed edges, wavering lines, any evidence that I should not be trusted, that I am nothing more than a kinder version of his mind’s conjured terrors. “How do I know you’re real?”

He thinks he’s clever; I expected this question, though, and at least for this one have an answer. “Because I’m not perfect. If I was only another hallucination, wouldn’t you imagine someone better than me? Someone who isn’t as flawed?” His gaze slides from mine and his mouth twists in an expression I want to interpret as shame or guilt, but with Daren it’s impossible to tell. It occurs to me I will lose him forever before I even learn how to read his face. “You aren’t flawed,” he mutters, grudging but honest. “And you aren’t going mad,” I counter as I kneel on the tile. “No matter how much you want to cling to that excuse.”

The only proof my words do more than slide off his chill exterior is the twitch of his fingers. “It would be easier,” he argues, but the fight has gone out of his voice and I know the desire to hurt and be hurt has passed. Now I can risk touch and so I lay my hand over his, nodding as I agree, “Yes, it would. Now, will you come back to bed?”

“I’m not tired,” Stubborn unto the very end, he shakes his head and feigns a strength he just doesn’t have anymore. I could argue but it’s easier to play along, so instead I head off to the kitchen to make us coffee. When I return with two mugs in my hands, however, Daren’s forehead rests on his drawn up knees and he’s fast asleep. The coffee goes down the sink and I carry him back to bed like a sick child.

The last time I see my lover his eyes glitter with such defiance I fall in love with him a second time. He insists on standing to face the officers whose heavy boot steps precede them up the stairwell, despite the fact he has been bedridden for days and even now trembles on his feet. As the first sharp knock raps against the door I spare a glance and flush hotly at the bitter smirk which draws back his blood stained lips. I am no doctor, but even to my untrained eye it is clear he has little time left. Even if we had not been betrayed, if we had never been forced apart, I would still have lost him in a matter of months, maybe weeks. At least now we go down together, side by side.

There is no second knock. The door swings open and here are the officers we have been expecting, those who have taken so many of our friends and will vanish us away as neatly as all the others. The one who must be the senior, for cruelty and arrogance waft from him like a predator’s musk, barks questions at us but his lackeys never record the answers. He does not care what we say; our word is meaningless against the law which already condemns us as deviants and criminals.

Despite the accusations hurled from the mouths of these men who seek to humiliate us before we are carted away, I find myself strangely calm. Resigned, perhaps, or simply too tired to fear anymore. It is only when one hulking brute lurches toward my lover with a pair of handcuffs in one fist and a cudgel in the other, eyes gleaming with the promise of violence, that my blood suddenly roars in my ears like a thunderstorm. I lose track of myself, my thoughts, my impulses, my control, and become only a body hurtling at the bully who dares harm the man I love. I land one solid blow of my own before I am thrown to the ground, boots striking my legs and back and chest. The thunder becomes crashing waves of pain.

The last time I see my lover it is through teary eyes as I lay stunned upon the floor. A fist buries itself in his stomach but he only laughs around the gasp of pain and spits a glob of bloodied saliva into the face of his assailant. He knows there is no true harm they can do him now, that he is far beyond their hatred, and he wants them to know as well. I have never been more proud of him than in this moment, nor have I ever loved him more fiercely.

I witness then the retaliatory blow which crumples my companion to the ground. The frail, unmoving body I have held against myself through so many nights is the last thing I see before something strikes my temple and I too sink into temporary darkness. When I regain my full faculties again I lay in a small, cold cell, and I am alone.