Roan opened his eyes to complete darkness, and he would have started panicking, except this dark place was familiar. He also felt warmth, strong arms around his chest, a body conformed to his, breath against his neck. He was at home, in his bedroom, the clean smell of Paris’s skin confirming the identity of the man spooning him. But how the hell did he get here?

The last thing he remembered was … what? It took a moment for him to recall being in Mia DeSoto’s car. Okay, right, she crashed the car to try and kill him. And then … what? His memory felt scattered, fragmented - he only had a solid feeling of dread.

He moved to look at the digital clock on the nightstand - it couldn’t have been a dream, could it? No way; that thing with Mia was way too weird - and that’s when Paris stirred. “Finally awake, sleepyhead?” he murmured, giving his a small kiss on the back of his neck. “I thought you were going to sleep until the weekend.”

Roan saw that it was just after midnight, but he couldn’t believe it. Wasn’t it just sundown when he got in Mia’s car? “What happened?”

“You don’t remember?” He nuzzled his neck, an affectionate gesture that could become amorous with repetition. Roan was suddenly acutely aware he smelled like cat, and wondered what his pheromone level was.

“I remember Mia trying to kill me. I assume she didn’t succeed.”

“No, but not for lack of trying. She could have hurt you badly.”

“How much did I transform?”

Paris hesitated, lightly stroking his abdomen with his fingertips. “All the way.”

“Oh shit.” That was the worst possible scenario: full transformation out of cycle. He was now officially the biggest freak possible. Just call him Roan, the Cat Faced Boy. “Why am I here now? Did they tranq me?”

“No, I talked you down.”

“What?”

So Paris told him, and it sounded so surreal he would have thought that Paris was teasing him if his sense of humor was that cruel. There was no way in hell that could have worked, and also, it was fucking nuts. “Why the fuck did you do that? I could have killed you!”

“No you wouldn’t.” He sound so calm and so certain.

He rolled over to face him, wondering if Par had decided to start taking Prozac or some other kind of mood stabilizer. “How can you say that? In cat form, I’m a big dumb lion.”

“No you’re not. Do I really have to explain you to you?”

“Probably.”

His eyes had adjusted enough to the dark that he could see Par’s sly, bittersweet grin. “Infecteds like me get invaded by the cat and the virus alike. We go through life alone, and then suddenly we have another thing inside us, something that overwhelms us and takes us over. We have to learn to live with this, this other, no matter how much it hurts, but it occurred to me that you virus children have things much differently.

“From the beginning, the cat has to learn to live with you as much as you have to learn to live with it. You know how Michael Henstridge is more often a cat than a human, and no one can figure out why? What if that’s the way he wants it? He’s too brain damaged to say, but that doesn’t mean he can’t impose his will on the cat, and maybe he finds life easier and less painful as a cat than as a human. And if that’s true, if he can will the cat, why can’t other virus children? Okay, you can’t break the virus cycle, that’s a given, but what if the cat really isn’t that separate? What if its an integrated aspect of you? Most virus children are too ill or too damaged for this to be investigated in any meaningful way, but not you.” He touched his face, and Paris had such big hands that his palm covered just about all of his cheek. “See, when you told me you could force a partial transformation, it got me thinking. Yes, it’s a purely physical process, and it has to be jump started by pain or adrenaline, but you can switch it off. And that’s the key.”

“Umm … I was with you until now.”

“How do you shut it down? When you let it start, you stop it after a certain point. How?”

This was what he both loved and hated about Paris. He knew him better than he knew himself, and such a thing could range from touching to downright creepy. This seemed to fall in between both of those extremes. “I just … force it to stop before it goes too far.”

“Force. In other words, you will it to stop.”

Yes, exactly. This felt like a “D‘oh!” moment. “You’re going to make me hit you, aren’t you?”

“Bring it on, pansy.” He lunged forward as if he was going to bite off his nose, but just kissed the tip of it instead. “Look, I’m not saying you can totally dominate the cat at all times; I’m just saying the cat has to make as many accommodations for you as you do for it. And I was counting on it when you were in your transformed state. Would it make you feel any better if I said I’d never try that if you were in the transformational stage of the virus?”

“A bit. But you risked your life on a supposition.”

“Not a supposition; I risked it on a belief that you were stronger than the cat. And I was right. So no more busting my balls about it, okay?”

Roan ran his hand through Paris’s hair and smiled, wondering what he’d ever done to deserve someone like him. And how he could understand something so naturally, something he should have got but somehow didn’t. Everything he said made a curious sense. Maybe Paris really had missed his calling as a detective. “You scare me sometimes.”

“You scare me too, so we’re even. And before I forget, Murphy wants you to know that you’re no longer on this case, and if you even try and resume investigating any of this, she’ll throw you in jail so fast your ass will get windburn.”

“Ah. I guess I should have expected that.” It wasn’t the worst thing that happened; that had to be learning he could fully transform out of the viral cycle. But didn’t he always suspect he could? If he could force a partial change, there was nothing stopping him from a full change. It was just unforgivable that he’d had to learn it in front of Murphy and a crowd full of strangers. He was just lucky Paris was there to get him under control and keep him safe, and lucky that Paris was a hell of a lot smarter than most people gave him credit for. Even him. “She’s going to want all our case notes, isn’t she?”

“Yep. She said she’d swing by about nine tomorrow to pick ‘em up.”

“So we have less than nine hours to fool around?”

Paris smiled seductively, his sky blue eyes sparkling with mischief. “Looks like it.”

“Damn. We’d better get started.” He drew his face to his and kissed him passionately, letting Paris’s body swamp his. He knew he should worry about the public transformation and all the fallout sure to come, but he just wasn’t up to facing it right now. He’d face it in the harsh light of day when he absolutely had to, but if he could avoid it for a while, he would.

Sometimes denial was a fun place to be.

****

Pull one piece out of a group dynamic, and the group could fall to pieces. That’s what happened, but not quite in the way Roan had expected.

He assumed Mia took care of Jordan on some level, and she did, but what he hadn’t considered was that Jordan looked after his sister as well. He must have known about her fragile mental state, and in his drive to protect her, he destroyed everything. The best intentions and all that.

Murphy had arrested Mia on suspicion of vehicular assault. At first Mia claimed that he had grabbed the wheel and done it while they were struggling, but while Paris was in the back seat of her car, searching through his bloody and shredded scraps of clothing for his Sig Sauer, he found the micro-cassette recorder he’d been using to document his conversation with Mia. Rewinding the tape and playing the last bit of it for Murphy, they all heard Mia’s obvious threat and no sound of a struggle, so Murphy slapped the cuffs on her and suggested she might change the charge to attempted homicide. Mia apparently had a bit of a meltdown as she was thrown in the back of a cruiser, screaming bloody murder and attempting to kick anybody within reach. She was such a commanding loon that rather than keep her in a holding cell, as soon as she was processed she was taken to Greenwood for observation (the hospital for the criminally insane).

She had the gall to call Eli to bail her out initially, but when he showed up at station house with Stovak, Paris told him that Mia was in with the group killing off infecteds, and was deliberately trying to frame him. Stovak went off on one of his anti-gay rants, but Eli was convinced enough to turn around and leave without even attempting to see Mia. Needless to say, she was never bailed out.

Jordan, being held on the bench warrant, heard about this and was pretty upset about it. Murphy took advantage of this, pointing out anything that he could tell her might help clear the charges against Mia, and he reluctantly took the bait. He confirmed that Mia knew Noah Hammond and that he didn’t like the kid because he was “weird”, although he couldn’t say precisely why or how she knew him. But he thought he was a paranoid “gun nut” type, although Mia claimed he wasn’t. Still, Jordan bought the gun found in his tool kit - he claimed it was only for “protection”, since he worked around “damn cats” all the time, and had nothing to do with Eli - from Noah. It was a street gun, the barrel filed down and the serial number gone, and while the ballistics tests cleared it in the “kitty killings”, the bullet looked like a good match for one discharged in a convenience store robbery three months ago. Jordan said he’d only owned the gun for a month, and besides that, he did have a good alibi, as he was working at the Church that day, in full view of a lot of people. But it gave Murphy enough cause to bring Noah in, and get a warrant to search his place for more illegal weapons.

Noah denied all of this, but the cops did find a couple of other “hot” guns in his apartment, as well as a couple of interesting things: a computer with a surprisingly capacious hard drive, and a UPS man’s uniform. They also found a scrap of paper with the names “Patrick, Christa, Melissa, Ashley, Kelly” written on it, with the first four names crossed out. (Kelly was never identified, but the fact that her name wasn’t crossed out was a positive sign.) His computer was so clean it was squeaky - Noah apparently knew his stuff, and gave that thing a computer enema, leaving no trace of anything - but there was little doubt that he was the hacker, they just couldn’t legally prove it. Not that they needed to; not only were the guns reason enough to hold him, but he had no alibi for the day of the robbery, and no one believed his excuse that the UPS uniform was an “old Halloween costume”. Murphy didn’t really believe he did the robbery, but she was willing to have him charged with it if they couldn’t get any murder charges to stick.

Noah refused to give up a “client” list of people who bought guns from him, but some solid detective work turned up the name of the Campbells. When questioned about knowing Noah Hammond, they denied it, and denied even owning a gun, but Murphy pegged them both as liars, and her partner, Dubois, decided to stake out the house for a bit, and since he actually had an in-law that lived in the Campbell‘s neighborhood, he had a perfectly legal reason to be there. He saw Reese carrying a satchel to his Range Rover before driving off rather late at night. He noted Reese was speeding and driving a bit erratically, so he notified a black and white that stopped him only a couple of blocks down the way.

This is where they lucked out in a big way: Reese failed a Breathalyzer, and he seemed so agitated that the cop arrested him on the spot. In the leather satchel that Dubois noticed? A gun - the same gun used by the killer. It was a perfect ballistic match. Reese had been on his way to dump it.

And that was that. The group all started attacking one another, blaming the others for the killings, and Murphy played them like violins. Tim, who must have seen the writing on the wall as soon as Mia was pulled in, had fled town - so quickly, he had abandoned his family. There was an APB out for him, though, since Reese had fingered him as a co-conspirator. Roan had heard a rumor that Amy was working out a deal to sell her husband and Noah up the river in exchange for a much milder charge, but Murphy refused to confirm or deny that one.

Humanity First wasn’t dead; far from it. It sunk below the radar once more, but in some wacky places on the internet they were branded as “heroes of humanity”, along with Reese, Amy, Noah, and Tim. Somehow Mia was left out of the equation, which figured. Jordan was working hard to get her declared mentally incompetent due to insanity so she would remain in the hospital and not face prison, which most people seemed to think was best; most people thought her sane days were behind her. Eli had intended to press harassment charges against Jordan, but Murphy convinced Eli to drop it, mainly because Jordan was suffering enough. Roan assumed blackmail was involved, because Eli wasn’t known for his generosity of spirit.

Speaking of which, Murphy seemed happy to pretend his transformation hadn’t happened, and he decided to leave it be, although he lived in fear of the day when she and Gordo compared notes and figured out something was wrong with him. Paris was a little peeved that Murphy and Dubois were getting credit in the media for breaking the case, but behind the scenes Murphy did give them credit when possible. That reporter who talked to Paris about the Nakamura case called them up again, apparently having heard the scuttlebutt that they were involved in this one too, but they refused to talk to him about it.

Luckily, by the time the case was nearing what would surely be a lurid media circus, he and Paris took some time off to go to Vancouver so Par could reconnect with his family. Paris had pretended he wasn’t a nervous wreck about this, but he obviously was. In some attempt to calm him down, Roan made a small vacation of it.

They drove up, as the border wasn’t far, and they listened to The Tragically Hip all the way there, in some attempt to get in the mood. They’d been to Canada quite a few times, but mostly on runs for prescription painkillers they really couldn’t get in the States without a lot of hassle, and beer. Or, as Paris liked to call them, “the staff of life”.

They reached downtown Vancouver on a cold but clear early afternoon, the sky a high blue between buildings, and Paris had dragged him to a Tim Horton’s because he insisted he had to try the “Timbits”. The place was steamy warm, and smelled of coffee, soup, and pastries. “I know how it sounds,” he claimed. “But they’re like crack. You’ll love them.”

Roan stared at him from across the table of their tiny window booth, and actually found it hard not to smile. He was nervous, sure, but Paris also seemed energized, as if being back in his hometown was good for him. “There’s two things wrong with that statement.”

Paris didn’t kick him under the table, but nudged his leg in a way that implied he’d get a kick next time. “Oh come on, we all know you’re fearless. Don’t prove the rumors wrong.”

“You know I’m a bad cop. I don’t like doughnuts.” He didn’t; he generally found them way too heavy, and had no idea how people could scarf them for breakfast. This included Paris, who could positively inhale a raspberry cream cheese Danish like it was nothing. “Or crack, for that matter.”

“Timbits are not just doughnuts; just you wait. Now, stop stalling and tell me what you want to drink.”

“Can’t I order a beer here? I thought this was Canada.”

“Be a good boy, and I’ll take you to this brewpub I know about in Victoria for dinner. There’s a pale ale you’ll kill for.”

“Don’t make me kill again, Par.”

That made him chuckle, which was what he was hoping for. Paris scrubbed his hands across his scalp and leaned back in his seat, favoring him with a fragile smile. “What the hell was I thinking by taking you home with me?”

“I assume you were high at the time.”

He grinned and shook his head, looking away to briefly watch other people order their overpriced coffees and leave, and Roan sensed the shift in his mood before he glanced down at the table, clasping his hands together nervously. “Ah shit, I don’t know if I can do this.”

He almost made a joke about the difficulties of ordering frou-frou coffee in a foreign land, but he knew he was talking about going home again. Roan had had to cajole him into calling Annie back and arranging the time of his visit. Paris had seemed to swing back and forth between nervous excitement and total hysteria at the prospect of the meeting ever since. “You can. You remember what Annie told you; they all want to see you. They miss you. How great is that to have people who miss you? I’m jealous. Most people are glad to see me leave.”

“But if they’re expecting the old me …”

“How likely is that? You told me they were smart people. So many years have passed; they know that time doesn’t stand still. They won’t expect you to be the college student who walked out the door and never returned.” He reached across the table and put his hand over his. “You’re going to be okay. Take it slow, and remember you don’t have to tell them anything you don’t want to right now. I’ll back whatever you say.”

He flashed him a frail smile. “I know. Thank you. I just … how do I put it exactly? Mom, Dad, remember how I was such a ladies man in high school? Well, I was seeing guys on the down low the whole time. I’m bisexual, but the love of my life is a man, and oh, people seem to be always trying to kill him, possibly because he’s an irredeemable smart ass. Also, I’m infected, and better yet, it’s the tiger strain, so I’m a dead man walking. What’s new with you?” He let his head fall to the table with a dramatic thump, just barely missing their hands.

Roan stroked his hair, wanting to say something comforting, but not sure what. Going for the joke was always easier. “You could say “Hi” first.”

Paris just moaned miserably, not in the mood for jokes right this second.

“They’ll probably just be glad to see you after all this time. You can just say you want to catch up with them, and you’ll explain your missing years later. Don’t worry so much; no one’s expecting you to blurt out your sordid life story as soon as you get in the door.”

He had a feeling he would respond to that, and he did. He lifted his head and looked at him curiously. “Sordid?”

“Oh yeah, totally X rated. I really would advise that you not tell your mother about your college foursome unless you think she’d be really cool with it.”

“Foursomes, plural.”

He stared at him. “You’re making that up.”

“I swear, I’m not! I told you I was a man whore. If it had a pulse and was reasonably attractive, there’s a very good chance I’d sleep with it. Do you know how many cases of the clap I got in a three month period? The pharmacy just had a standing prescription of tetracycline for me. It’s probably a shock that it took me so long to get infected, as I was just asking for it.”

Roan took his hands away from him like he suddenly just realized he was a venereal disease farm. “Remind me to burn our sheets when we get home.”

Finally Paris laughed, his shoulders losing some of their tension as he slumped back against his seat. “You knew I was a reformed whore when you started seeing me, so you can’t claim you’re shocked now.”

“I don’t know if I’m horrified or slightly jealous. I’ve led such a vanilla life, and you’ve actually attended an orgy, which I assumed died off with the Roman empire.”

“Orgies are really overrated. You can only enjoy them while high, and once it wears off, you realize how many people there have flabby asses and pinched faces, and it loses some of its luster.”

“I really do hope this is a comedy bit, ‘cause I’m starting to lean towards horrified.”

“And you call yourself a gay man? Sister, please.” Paris gave him a big, smart ass grin which was dazzling in its brightness. It lit up his whole face, making him look painfully handsome. He could see why people were eager to invite him to an orgy. “You know what we should do? We should get married. Just think of the reaction of my folks when I tell them I’m married, and then introduce you as my husband. After that, telling them I’m infected would be a drop in the bucket.”

“You can’t be serious.”

“What? Why not? I’m still a Canadian citizen.”

“You know how I feel about marriage. I don’t know why it exists; I’ve seen anything but misery associated with it. Hell, I make a living on broken marriages, on spouses who cheat and lie to one another, who break pre-nups and cat around town with the Dallas Cowboys or their cheerleading squad, or both. I mean, if gays want to be as miserable as straights, fine, let ‘em marry, but I think it’s a disaster no matter the gender.”

Paris was still grinning. “You’re such a romantic.”

“You just want a reason to get yourself a Cowboy. Or a green card.”

“Just think of how many people we’ll upset if we come home and claim we got married in Canada. Eli would probably have a stroke, and Stovak’s head would explode. I bet Doctor Braunbeck would stop offering us gorp.”

“That’s no fair. You know I l do most things out of spite.”

“I know! And this would be the ultimate act of revenge.”

He was serious, wasn’t he? Weird. But time wasn’t on Paris’s side, and that’s why he pressed him to reconnect with his folks. Roan tried hard not to think about it, but his last transformational period had probably been the worst one yet - Paris lost way too much weight (at the end of the cycle, he looked like a starvation victim), and the pain was so bad they had to up his drug dosage to levels so ludicrous he ended up sleeping most of the day. He even missed three days of work after the cycle was over; Roan thought he should have the whole week off, but Paris refused. He was just starting to look like his normal self again.

He didn’t want to think about this. He didn’t want to think that Paris’s assessment of himself as a “dead man walking” was correct, but he knew it probably was. He didn’t know how much time he had left now, but it probably couldn’t be measured in years. He couldn’t imagine life without him in it, and yet he knew realistically he was going to have to prepare himself for just that.

How did you do that? How did you brace yourself for the most important person in your life dying on you? And that was the tragedy that almost everyone faced at some point in their life. He just thought it would never get to him because he’d tried so hard not to let anyone get that close. He preferred being alone, he really did … only now he wasn’t so sure. He kind of hated himself for it, and on top of that he hated himself for hating himself over it. He just couldn’t win.

Roan looked at him and wondered where they would go from here, and if there would be any light at the end of the tunnel before it collapsed on top of them.

Too bad there was really no such thing as a happy ending.