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Darren fixed her with a stare so full of silent fury that he almost seemed to be burning a hole through her with his eyes. “You don’t have the key. You carry around handcuffs to behave like a stalker child, and you don’t even have a key if you realize later what a huge mistake you made.” It looked like he was judging how difficult it would be to throttle her with only one free hand. “…Such an idiot.”

Fawn might have found the situation funny, but he absolutely did not. He’d been trying so hard to not put anyone in danger except himself, and now two people were dead and a third one seemed determined to join them by whatever means she could possibly attain. The cat draped over his shoulders seemed to share his opinion, staring at Fawn out of annoyed eyes before narrowing them to slits and seeming to doze off.

“I can break this tonight,” he said at last. “So I’ll find somewhere to stay until then. And it looks like whatever plans you had for today are off,” he added, his dark eyes still full of frustration. “Since you decided to be stupid and lock us together for a day.”

Maybe there was one good thing about this. If he was as sharp with her as possible (which, considering his mood, wouldn’t be difficult) and she was stuck with him for an entire day, she probably wouldn’t be able to wait to get away from him by the time he could actually break the ******** chain.

Turning away and jerking his arm again to pull her along like a reluctant puppy, he said flatly, “This way.” He seemed to know his way around the side streets and the alleyways where people rarely went, and it took them hardly fifteen minutes of walking (during which, almost magically, no one saw them) before he found his way to an old part of town. Here, buildings were dilapidated and sagging, most windows were broken, and the whole area was as quiet as a tomb. “In here.”

The back door that he pushed open was quiet, even though it looked like it should be loud and creaky—Darren had been here before, clearly, since he evinced no surprise. The inside, however, was as dusty and old as the outside said it should be. “This will do.”

Darren didn’t even bother to swear at her when she told him what her ‘plans’ were, because it was more than obvious that anything he said just went in one ear and out the other. More and more, he was asking himself what he had been thinking, to be worried about whether or not she was the dead one in his apartment; since she apparently had a death wish anyway…

No, he thought, shutting that line of thought down as he felt something stir deep inside him, almost hungrily. No. He was used to thinking that way, to reacting with violence, but ever since he’d gotten sick, he couldn’t do that anymore—he always felt that stirring the moment he did. Quite frankly, it was the only reason he hadn’t lost his temper at her entirely yet.

At the doorway, when she dug in her heels, a mirthless smile crossed his lips. “Sorry, sweetheart. You got yourself into this. And right at the moment, you really don’t have a choice. I’m bigger than you.” To prove his point, he walked inside and hauled on the chain. Fawn, in all of her 5’4” stature, was not going to be able to stand against Darren and hold onto a weak door jamb one-handed unless she had also been recently…sickened.

The thought made him pause for a beat. What if just being around him was enough to infect her? Would he still be worried the same way if he knew she was already infected and it was just…dormant?

No, he decided at last. He wouldn’t be worried then. He would just feel guilty, hate her and hate himself. But as far as that went, particularly the last part, he already had that well under control, so how much worse could it be?

That decided, he kept walking. Fawn could keep up, or she could be dragged across the dusty floor. At the moment, he really didn’t care which.

Darren didn’t even glance back at her, though if she was listening carefully she might catch his muttered curse. “Hold your breath,” he said dryly. “The upstairs isn’t like this. I leave the downstairs this way so that no one will come looking for anything here.” He had less than zero interest in going to Fawn’s place, particularly not in handcuffs. Though he tried to draw his hand away when she touched the back of his, he’d forgotten that they were connected, and pulling away did no good. Instead he tried, again, to ask for what he wanted. “Please don’t do that.”

Half-dragging and half-carrying her upstairs, he led her up and into a darker but surprisingly clean hallway. A whisper of fresh fall air seemed to swirl in the hallways (of course—the windows were broken), and the entire place seemed like a different world from the dusty downstairs that he had pulled her through. Unless Fawn was particularly sensitive, this area should be safe for her.

Once he used his free hand to open a door, the cat happily sprang down from his shoulders in order to jump onto an old but serviceable-looking grey chair with a cushion sitting on the seat of it. Darren didn’t look back at Fawn, and he didn’t seem to think he needed any explanation for having this second place to live—and indeed, it made perfect sense in his eyes.

He forgot that she didn’t, perhaps, know as much about his illness as he did.

Crossing to the bed and almost able to ignore the added weight at this point, he sat down on the end of it and said flatly, “So. What was your ‘plan’ after you forced yourself into my personal space for a day?” The question was bland, but the frustration underneath it was plain, if Fawn was listening. As he asked, he turned his head to stare out the window, where an old tree was slowly beginning to shed its colourful leaves. The bright colours against the blue sky were startling to his eyes, which already felt like they were adjusting to prefer dimness (just like the rest of him). But it was still beautiful.

How much longer would he be able to appreciate beauty?

Darren glanced over at her, looking weary but surprisingly amused. “Didn’t think it through, I take it. Can’t say that’s much of a surprise.” Anyone who handcuffed herself to someone without having the key was definitely not the kind of person to think her plans through, after all. He looked down at the chain that joined their hands, studying it thoughtfully. It looked like a good set (and if part of him wanted to know where she’d gotten it and why she had it, he resolutely squashed that). If it had been the cheap costume kind, he had no doubt that he could have broken it even now. But it wasn’t, and he couldn’t, so he would have to wait until nightfall.

“Listen,” he said at last, noticing her blush but presuming it came from…well, other things…and thus declining to comment on it. “I know you’re terrible at listening to what I tell you, but listen to this, all right? When it gets dark, I’ll…be able to break the chain. When I do that, I want you to go. Take the cat or don’t, apparently she knows how to handle herself around me, but I want you to get out of here once I break the chain. It doesn’t matter what I’m saying, doesn’t matter what I tell you then. I want you to leave this house when it gets dark.”

He looked around the room as though searching for some sort of inspiration, anything that would make him say the perfect words to get Fawn to understand without him actually going into explanations. Since apparently the little room failed him, he sighed. “Promise me that you’ll leave when it gets dark, and I’ll…” What would he do? What could he promise for this that would influence her enough to do what he asked when this was so important?

“Well, I won’t kill you, for one thing,” he muttered, mostly to himself. “But…I don’t know. If you have any suggestions, and you promise me that you’ll get out when it gets dark, I’ll do them—within reason.”

Darren frowned down at her after she asked her question. “Why do you think I don’t like you? I like you fine,” he said, looking honestly surprised. “You do stupid things sometimes,” and here he pointedly jangled the chain that held them together, “and I think you can be foolish, but I don’t know you well enough not to like you.” The cat purred pleasantly from where it lay on the chair, seeming pleased with their discussion. Perhaps she thought it was beyond time that the two of them just talked about what was going on here.

When it came time to address the rest of the issues, though, his face became somewhat haunted and he looked away uncomfortably. “I…well,” he muttered, sounding awkward. “What, having two dead men in my apartment after throwing you out and then telling you I don’t remember what happened or where I was the night before isn’t enough evidence for you?”

Taking a deep breath and trying to look normal and calm, he said quietly, “I look different because I’m dying, ever since that…thing…well, never mind. I told you. Things like this keep happening. I wake up in the morning and the room around me is shredded—you remember what the living room looked like. I dream of death and a few mornings later I find them in the obituaries. I want to hurt people, it doesn’t matter who they are or whether they’ve done anything. I made this room into a hidden space where no one would go for when I just couldn’t take it anymore. I don’t remember how it feels not to be in pain every moment of every day. This is the first time someone’s been found dead in my apartment, but it’s not the first time I’ve woken up expecting to find blood on my hands and not remembering why.”

With a hint of a twisted smile, he added, “I never have, but one day I know I will.”

Looking away from her, he said quietly, “If you still want me to kiss you, Fawn, two things. One, you need to work on your survival instinct, and two, you’re going to have to promise me, like I asked.”

Darren looked frustrated. “I don’t not like you,” he said again. “I just don’t know you. And I haven’t tried to get to know you because, and I repeat, I am dying. There’s no point in getting to know people when I have a few months to live, tops.”

He blatantly ignored her question about the ‘thing’—he’d told her a lot, but that was just not coming out of his mouth no matter what she did. It was not the time or the place to talk to her about old fears and old wounds, and the moment when he’d been sure he would die on a park path with no one there to hear him.

Though he chuckled dryly at her comment, he said nothing about it—how would seeing a therapist help him? He was going to die. Obviously he hadn’t made it clear enough to her that these weren’t just possibilities or urges, they were damn near certainties; if he didn’t remove himself from certain situations, if he wasn’t careful enough when and where he spent his time, if he wasn’t alone by nightfall, people got hurt. He was pretty sure that sometimes they died.

When she semi-retracted her request for the kiss, he studied her out of calm dark eyes, considering his options. If he didn’t do it, she might not leave. If he did do it, well…he’d heard somewhere that sometimes just kissing the wrong person was all it took for someone to realize that it was the wrong person. Of course he’d also heard lots of stories about how it was then that so-and-so’s cousin or roommate or parent or whatever realized that it was the right person, but that was just a risk he would have to take.

“Close your eyes,” he said quietly. His free hand rested against the back of her neck, keeping her in place, and then he leaned forward and kissed her.

When the kiss ended, Darren drew back again, feeling uncomfortable and unsettled. He didn’t usually do things like this. He didn’t kiss people as part of agreements and he definitely didn’t kiss people that he didn’t know. It hadn’t felt wrong, but now he thought he’d made a mistake somewhere. He shouldn’t have done this, it had been a bad idea, he—

He took a look at Fawn’s face, her head still tilted up and her eyes still shut, and knew he’d misjudged, hoped against hope, and made a terrible mistake. What he didn’t know was what to do about it; it wasn’t exactly as though he could take it back, after all.

By the time she opened her eyes again, he would be looking away. He didn’t know what to say to her. He didn’t think there was anything that he could say that wouldn’t feel like he was compounding the mistake he’d just made.

“You win,” he heard her say, and it was almost enough to make him laugh. Funny. I was just going to say the same about you.

“Good,” was all he said in response, because saying anything else would just not be a good idea at that moment. Well. Now that that was settled, he still had to handle an entire day trying to figure out how to make sure she kept that promise. He’d find a way, just as soon as he could look her in the face again without embarrassment. (That might take a while.)