Since neither he nor Paris had anything to do, they slept in until almost noon, and then Roan discovered Paris had actually gotten up before him and was making his famous French toast. Roan figured that combining Vicodin with both beer and wine was just asking to be put in a coma, and he was probably lucky he wasn’t barfing his guts out.

After showering and getting dressed, leaving some itchy stubble on his face because Paris liked the look (and because it covered some of his bruise), he went downstairs to the smells of warm bread, maple syrup, and espresso, and the faint chatter of a television tuned to the Canadian channel. (Paris would occasionally watch it when he was feeling “nostalgic”, but it never seemed to last longer than fifteen minutes - nostalgia with Paris had a very brief shelf life). “Damn it,“ Par exclaimed upon seeing him. “I was gonna come upstairs and stick you with a B-12 shot. I thought you were never getting up.”

“Yesterday really took it out of me. I don’t know why.” But he did know why, and the look Paris gave him, one of sad affection, seemed to say he knew why too. But he didn’t say it. He just slid a plate of French toast down the breakfast bar, and put a mug of espresso beside it. Roan took that as an invitation and sat down on one of the stools, as Paris took a seat on the other side and started in on his breakfast.

The newspaper was sitting folded off to the side, and Roan glanced at it, but it was the same old depressing stuff: war, death, privacy violations, a Human interest story that seemed depressing for its attempt at forced cheer. Paris had the remote for the television and picked it up, flipping through channels as he sipped his espresso, which had a thick dollop of whipped cream on top. While he was scanning channels, Roan wasn’t really paying attention, but the name “Clifford Braben” suddenly jumped out, and he turned around to see the screen, saying, “Hold it there.”

It was the local news channel, where a blandly attractive Asian woman in a bright red blouse was reporting from behind a low desk, with smaller, more fragile desks and people somewhat visible in the background. The local news channel had no budget, and it generally showed.

The story was all about Clifford Braben being accused of taking gifts and money from a development company before casting the deciding vote on the Hidden Hills golf course project, which had turned out so far to be a financial sinkhole. The city council had to change zoning laws to allow a large parcel of formerly public lands to be sold to the development company that supposedly bribed Cliff for his vote, and they’d been planning a super luxury golf course that would not only have a horrible effect on the environment, but would be financially out of reach for anyone who actually lived within five miles of the place. Braben was shown leaving an attorney’s office looking pinch faced and annoyed, like Dick Cheney asked anything besides “Why are you so great?” , and pushed his hand against the camera lens in a gesture known to white collar criminals everywhere. “Isn’t that that guy’s father? Gavin’s?” Paris asked.

“Step-father,” Roan corrected, chuckling low in his throat. So Jay wasn’t content to just take down Gavin - he was going for the whole family. And if Clifford actually was bribed to push through the Hidden Hills debacle or was a complete innocent, it didn’t matter; this would be covered by the local media for a while, as it was just that desperately unpopular. And Clifford wasn’t going to be running for the governorship - his political career here was over, at least for the time being. He’d been torpedoed by a man who’d probably done his share of bribing to get his own unpopular land grab deal through. What on Earth was Jay going to do to Gavin, who’d really pissed him off? “Sic ‘em, boy,” he muttered under his breath.

“What?” Paris asked.

“Nothing. Do you know he hated cats and queers both?”

“Really? Ooh, we should go to his office and make out in front of him, and then when security tries to toss us out, you can lion out on them. It’ll be a twofer.”

“You still live to shock, don’t you?”

“Hey, I’m the slacker in a family of over-achievers. If I wanted to get noticed, I had to make a display of myself.”

“Which explains your perfection of it.” He turned back to face Paris - the news team had moved on to the weatherman with the ill fitting hairpiece - and shot him a grin, which Par returned in blinding affection.

“Damn right baby. I’m the king of desperate displays for attention.”

“Which explains your shirt,” he responded, gesturing at it with his fork. It was a black t-shirt that said simply, in plain white letters across the chest, ‘Don’t hate me because I’m beautiful. Hate me because I fucked your dad.’ That had actually been a birthday present from Randi, which Par had absolutely loved, although Roan had to ask him to please never wear it to the office.

Paris grinned slyly. “This isn’t just a bid for attention. There were a couple of instances where this was factually true. “

“Please don’t bring up your sordid past now; I’m eating.”

“Sordid?” he repeated, then did it again, thinking it over. “Sordid. Is it wrong I like the sound of that?”

“Probably, but I won’t hold it against you.”

“See? That’s why you’re the best husband ever.” He leaned over the breakfast bar and planted a kiss on his forehead, and Roan gave him a tight, slightly sarcastic smile.

Par turned off the t.v. since the news was done having anything interesting in it, and they finished breakfast in a mix of companionable silence and meaningless talk. Roan had a feeling they were talking around something, but he really didn’t know what it could be.

And then he did. They were piling breakfast dishes in the sink when Paris, facing away from him, said simply, “I’m doing it tomorrow.”

It took Roan a minute to understand what he said, and then another minute to hope he’d heard him wrong. But he hadn’t, and there was no mistaking what he meant. Unsure what to do, he finally put his arms around his waist and rested his head on his shoulder, swallowing back a huge lump that had spontaneously formed in his throat. “Why so soon?”

Paris sighed, and reached up and cupped the back of his neck. “I realized how close I was cutting it. I’ll be within the virus cycle ‘s high range starting tomorrow, and you know I could transform at any time after that. I thought I’d have more time, but it just got away from me.” He caressed the back of his neck for a moment, and Roan found it amazing he was trying to comfort him. “So, because of that, I thought we could have some fun today.”

“Absolutely. What do you want to do?”

“Besides you?”

Roan laughed. “Yeah, besides me.”

“It sounds nuts, but I want to go to the beach.”

“Hon, it’s thirty three degrees outside.”

“I don’t want to go swimming or anything. I just want to see the ocean.”

He kissed the side of Paris’s neck, once again noting how abnormally warm his skin was. Something in his mind wanted to rage about how unfair this was, but he didn’t allow himself to, because he wasn’t going to ruin Paris’s day. Nothing about this stupid fucking disease was fair, any more than life was fair. Was it fair that, of all the virus children born brain damaged and ill, he somehow came out of it okay? Was it fair that while Paris was getting sicker and sicker, he was only getting stronger? He might actually have a fair shot at living an almost normal human lifespan - and the prospect of that terrified him. A large part of him thought he’d be much better off going with Paris, and he wished he could. “Okay then. Let’s get going.”

Paris glanced back at him, gracing him with a warm, affectionate smile that made Roan’s stomach twinge. How would he live his final day, if he knew it was? Roan wasn’t sure, didn’t know, and didn’t want to think about it.

They poured a thermos of espresso, then put on their coats and headed out to the garage. They took the Mustang, Roan driving, so Paris could lean into him as he drove, Roan’s arm draped over his shoulders and Paris’s warm hand on his knee. The traffic wasn’t bad, and got even thinner as they headed out towards the coast, as a cold November day was hardly peak time for the tourists. He was pretty sure Paris dozed off against him for a bit, his body radiating so much heat he hardly needed to have the car heater on, but he didn’t mind. He felt a surprising emotional numbness, but maybe it wasn’t that surprising in retrospect. After all, the world was ending; this was it. But it was one of those things that was so huge, so impossible to fathom, that it didn’t really strike you what was happening until it had already happened. Knowing that the world was about to be ripped out from under you wasn’t the same as finding yourself falling into a bottomless chasm.

The parking lot for the beach was almost totally empty save for an old style Volkswagen van, and once they got out onto the empty beach, they figured out who it must have belonged to. Way out in the blue-grey ocean, they saw a lithe figure clad in a tight, full body wetsuit balanced on a yellow surfboard, attempting to catch some of the meager waves out there. They decided he was fucking nuts, but more power to him, as long as he didn’t suffer from hypothermia.

It was beautiful here, and peaceful, with only the sighing of the waves and the cries of the seabirds; only the biting cold was a bit of a pisser. But Paris sat down on the hard packed sand and began tracing a pattern in the beach with his finger. Paris always had an artistic bent, but he never did much with it; as he told Roan when he showed him some of the drawings and paintings he did as a teenager (his parents kept them all, and they had a more abstract effort of his framed in their living room), he never had any ambitions beyond getting laid as much as humanly possible. He just didn’t care about anything else. Roan figured he was exaggerating, but Paris did seem to suffer a terminal lack of ambition. As strange as it might sound, he actually liked that about him; it seemed very Zen.

Roan, who had no artistic ability to speak of, joined him, ending up making some sort of mandala pattern, as it was easy to draw spirals and circles. Paris looked at it and seemed to like it, and he joined him by drawing his own mandala pattern as well. What the hell were they doing? Roan had no idea, but bizarrely enough, they were having fun.

They had covered half the beach with loops and whorls, circles and geometric patterns, when the surfer paddled back to shore. He was older than Roan had assumed, in his earlier thirties, although he had shoulder length brown hair, and the body encased in the black wetsuit looked impressively sleek. He looked at what they had done, and said, “Cool. You guys’ artists?” He actually had the faintest trace of a German accent, which surprised him - he really hadn’t expected that.

“Only he is,” Roan said, pointing at Paris. “I’m just copying him.”

Paris denied that, but surfer dude - as Roan had mentally dubbed him - seem impressed. He went back to his van and put his surfboard away, and then came back, dressed in drier, warmer clothes, and carrying a digital camera. He took pictures of what they had done, and as it turned out, he was an artist - a glass blower, actually. (Oh, the jokes he could have made, but didn’t.) They chatted for a bit, and exchanged email addresses so he could send them copies of the photos he took. His names was Lukas, which actually seemed like the perfect name for a German surfer/glassblower wearing a Grateful Dead t-shirt and driving a VW van. Roan bet ten to one that the back of the guy’s van smelled like old bong water.

They all shook hands, and Lukas invited them to drop by the “gallery” sometime (not a proper gallery, just a small shop in a local market where he and a bunch of other artists attempted to sell their wares) before leaving. Once he was gone, Paris laughed. “Well, that was weird. It’s not every day you meet a German surfer.”

“And glassblower.” Roan chuckled, and put his arms around Paris, pulling him close. “I think he was checking you out.”

“You’re just saying that to feed my ego.” He slid his arms around his waist and smiled at him.

“No. He was totally checking out your crotch. I was thinking of punching him.”

His grin broadened until it looked like he was going to laugh. “I can’t possibly love you more.”

They returned to the car, and Paris snuggled against him for the drive back. They stopped at their usual Chinese restaurant and because they were much liked regulars, they got the best booth and the nicest waitress. He didn’t know if they knew they were gay; what they knew was they were great customers and they tipped really well. Ultimately, that was probably all they cared about. It would have been nice if things were always that simple.

During lunch, they both had one more drink than they probably should have, and picking over dessert, Paris told him, “I have stuffed marked. I put it in the bedroom closet.”

Was it the beer? Or did this just not make sense? “What?”

“Everything else is yours. Do what you want with it. Except no throwing away my CDs, damn it. “

Now he understood what he was saying. He had prepared his things, what he wanted to give away to various people, and set them aside for him to distribute after his death. A detail that probably would have escaped Roan, or would have been exceptionally painful. He wanted to ask him when he did that, but realized it must have been yesterday, when he was home, before he collapsed. Maybe that’s why he collapsed - the fever and doing all that work may have taken it out of him. “I’m not going to throw away anything of yours,” he told him honestly. How could he? It would be all he had left of Paris. The thought of it made his throat threaten to close up again.

Paris reached across the table and stroked his cheek with the back of his hand, his look so kind it was almost painful to look at straight on. “I’m always going to be with you, you know. As long as you remember me, I will exist. Memory is a form of existence, life after death. Just do me a favor and try to remember only the good things. “

Roan couldn’t help but gasp at this. It was almost a laugh, and yet also a reaction of shock. Yeah, he said he liked him because he was kind of Zen, but he’d never actually been Zen. Tears came to his eyes and he wiped them away as he asked, “Goddamn, how are you handling this so well?”

He gave him a kind smile, and took his hand in his, giving it a comforting squeeze. “Because I expected to die years ago, hon. Hell, I wanted to. I was never going to have sex again, and I couldn’t trust myself around people; the tiger could kill again. I should have killed myself quicker but I was too scared to do it. So I figured if I kept drinking and just waited, death would find me. It almost did too, before some private eye with a preternaturally sharp nose crossed my path.” He lifted his hand and kissed it, giving him a sweet smile. “So all this time has been a gift. I didn’t expect it, and I’m grateful for it. I’ve had so much fun. Thank you.”

“What the hell are you thanking me for?”

“For the good time, sailor.” Paris gave him a hearty grin with a white flash of teeth. “You should charge admission into your life. It’s a trip.”

“People would demand refunds.”

“Only if they’re complete pussies.” A couple walked past on their way to a table, and Roan’s first impulse was to let Paris’s hand go - you had to be really careful about showing affection in public places, because people could have the most astonishingly psychotic reactions - but Paris didn’t let go of his hand. And he was right - who gave a fuck? Today, nothing much mattered at all, beyond Paris. Besides, they could go psycho, but he could partially transform into a lion - he won. Again, he won the biggest fucking psycho sweepstakes.

“So what do you want to do now?”

His blue eyes glowed mischievously. “Go home and fuck our brains out.”

Now that was the type of cheap date that he liked.

So they went home and did just that. Paris was still the most beautiful man he’d ever seen, even though the ravages of illness made his ribs stand out beneath his skin, made his hip and shoulder bones jut out almost painfully, made his flat stomach concave. It occurred to him that he’d probably think he was beautiful no matter how he looked, because to him he always would be. He loved him so fiercely it honestly scared the shit out of him. He had not wanted to ever feel so much for anyone, especially after Connor, but somehow he had fallen harder for Paris than he ever had for Con. It was almost like he subconsciously sabotaged himself … which wouldn’t surprise him, actually.

The good thing about living so far away from everyone was they had privacy no matter the fact that they had their bedroom curtains open, and while they fell asleep with the pale winter sun warming their skin, when Roan woke up, the sky was dark and sparkling with stars, and he caught Paris giving himself a B-12 injection. Well, why not? This was his last day to use them.

Paris now wanted to go out, hit Panic and maybe a more sedate bar on the way home, which Roan kind of suspected he’d want to do. What he hadn’t expected was that Par would insist on picking out his clothes. “Oh come on,” Paris said, clad only in a towel wrapped around his waist. They’d just gotten out of the shower, and Roan had just pulled on his boxers and had grabbed a pair of pants when Paris stopped him. “You’re such a hottie and you always hide it. I want to show you off. “

He sighed heavily, fixing him with a skeptical look. “I am not, nor have I ever been, a “hottie“. You’re just saying that because you love me.” Saying that made him feel a twinge in his chest that he ignored.

“No, not just because of that. The puppy still has a major league crush on you, you know.“ Paris put his arm around his waist and kissed his ear. “You have the most striking eyes I’ve ever seen, and you have the greatest arms. Once the queens at Panic get a look at your arms they’re going to faint.”

He groaned in defeat. “ You’re going to make me wear something sleeveless, aren’t you?”

“Just stay here,” he said, carefully not answering the question, and then went to search the drawers and closet.

“No half shirts!” He warned him. “And if you bring me anything spandex I swear to your mother I’m flushing it down the toilet!”

Eventually he dressed Roan up in this sleeveless black muscle shirt that had see through fishnet like vents on the side, but since it was Paris’s shirt - of course it was Paris’s shirt; he didn’t own anything even partially see through - it was a bit baggy and not all that revealing. Roan was able to pick out his own jeans, but Paris objected to him wearing a weather appropriate coat. “You have to go with the black leather jacket. You’ve got this whole rough trade thing going on.”

“I am not rough trade,” he snapped, but of course completely caved to Paris’s wishes. Par knew he would too, the bastard. Par, as if wanting to deliberately contrast with his dark wardrobe, wore a skin tight white t-shirt and extremely pale jeans with strategically worn holes in them, although they were baggy enough now that you couldn’t actually see how slender his legs and hips were now.

Once again, Mighty Mouse was on the door of Panic, and was happy to see Paris, whom he let through instantly. He also looked Roan over, and said, “Don’t you clean up nice?”

Inside the noisy, crowded club, that seemed to be the general consensus of the men who swarmed Paris like a long lost brother at a family reunion. One of the twinks even said to him, “You don’t look so bad, y’know, for a redhead.”

He sat at the bar while Paris went to talk to the DJ that was working tonight, a whisper thin but still nicely built black man wearing a magenta cowboy hat and no shirt (was it a rule that employees of Panic could not, under any circumstances, wear shirts?), and slipped him a folded up computer print out. He knew it was the play list that Paris wanted at his wake - he’d already let him know he wanted a wake at Panic. He wanted to be cremated, and he wanted a wake here, so everybody could get bombed and “not be so fucking miserable”. Even in death, Paris wanted a wild party.

Roan folded his arms on the bar and rested his head on them as some kind of inexplicable dance remix of a Stone Roses song pounded through the club, causing reverberations he could feel up his legs. Why did time do this? Why did it move so fast when all you wanted it to do was slow the fuck down? He felt like he was waiting for his own execution. Although he suspected it wouldn’t be so bad if it was his execution. He could fight that; he could go down swinging. But you couldn’t fight time, and you could fight this fucking relentless virus, or the effects it was having on Paris’s system. All he could do was stand by helplessly and watch, and he couldn’t tolerate being helpless. He swore that once he grew up, he would never be helpless again. Oh, how life loved to stick in the shiv.

Suddenly he felt a warm hand on his arm, and he lifted his head to see that it was Toby the bartender, whose chocolate brown eyes were almost liquid with sympathy. “You guys’ drinks are on the house tonight,” he told him, giving his arm a pat before withdrawing his hand.

Only then did Roan realize that Toby hadn’t told anyone - he hadn’t told any of the others that he and Paris were infected. He was a good bartender and he kept his clients’ secrets to himself. He would have thanked him for that, but something in Toby’s expression told him that wasn’t necessary. “You don’t have to -”

“It’s done,” he said, with a casual shrug of his shoulder. “Just take care of yourselves.” He was called down to the other end of the bar by a customer, and Roan watched him go. Did the manager set that up? He must have known that Paris was in bad straits since they had to set up the wake. Just from the looks he occasionally threw their way, he surmised only Toby knew.

Paris captivated all the men, but they couldn’t stay as long as he probably wanted, because in spite of the B-12 he got tired fast. Paris decided this was enough bar hopping for him, so they headed home. Because Roan wanted to see if there was anything more about Braben, he listened to the local news update on one of the AM bands. The same scandal was enveloping Braben, and apparently the IRS was now investigating him. But as the story on him ended, one on his step-son began. Gavin had been charged with assault by three different women who claimed he deliberately infected them. When the cops arrived to interview him, they found illegal drugs on the premises, including pot, ecstasy, rohypnol, cocaine, and heroin. He claimed the drugs weren’t his and he infected no one, but he was in the infected wing of the local prison. It seems the sheer amount of illegal drugs found in his possession was enough for a federal charge. Had Jay set him up? Probably - Gavin was a user, not a dealer. Ironically, he’d probably do more time on drug charges than he ever would’ve for murder. Jay Bishop’s terminal fucking up of the lives of Gavin and Clifford was probably complete. And if either of them got away unscathed, there’d be a new bear trap waiting around the corner for them, for as long as Jay lived. He seemed like a vindictive bitch.

Paris commented on Gavin’s bad karma, and Roan agreed. He didn’t know if Paris suspected the truth, because neither of them pursued it.

Back home, Paris wanted to do something they hadn’t done since Paris had moved in to his house: go up on the roof and look at the stars. It wasn’t difficult; thanks to an architectural quirk, there was a pointless, narrow ledge outside of the main bedroom window, and from there it was easy to lever yourself up onto the roof, which was sloped gently enough that you could lay back and just enjoy the overhead view without worrying about falling off. It was freezing up there, but the night was still, there was almost no wind, and the sky was magnificent. Inky black, but out here, far from the light pollution of the city, the stars were bright pinpricks of white light, and there was a crescent moon that seemed almost as bright as a spotlight, gauzy clouds occasionally scudding over it, looking like wisps of velvet. It was beautiful, but Roan mainly watched Paris watching the sky, his breath visible in ephemeral white clouds. Roan wished he could freeze this moment, stop time completely.

Paris eventually got too cold, so they had to climb back inside. To warm up, they crawled into bed and made love once more, Roan trying very hard not to think that this was the last time they ever would. Then they slept for a while, holding each other tightly in spite of the general discomfort of doing such a thing. Roan needed to know he was still here.

He woke up when Paris got up in the early morning, and he kissed his forehead and told him he’d be right back. Roan actually dozed off for a bit before faint music coming from downstairs roused him. It sounded like mellow electronic music, and he eventually placed it as M83’s “Before The Dawn Heals Us”. Paris had said that seemed like an appropriate final soundtrack. Paris finally came back, smiling, and carrying a hypodermic needle. “There’s a dusting of snow out there,” he reported happily, crawling back beneath the covers. “It’ll probably be gone in a couple of hours, so if you want to build a really tiny snowman, you’d better get out there soon.”

Paris was hiding the needle, but he knew what it was, what it contained. A fatal overdose. Roan couldn’t keep from crying as he admitted, “I don’t want you to go.”

He took his face in his hands and kissed him, but when Paris pulled back, he could see tears in his eyes as well. “I don’t want to go either, but I have to. I can feel it, you know? The sicker I get, the more I can feel the tiger waiting. I think it wants to get out before it dies too. That’s not going to happen.” Roan buried his face in the side of his neck, trying to make himself stop crying, and Paris held him tight, stroking his hair. “Sweetheart, I need you to promise me something: live for me. I can’t do it, so you’re going to have to do it for me.” Paris pulled him back, making him look him in the eye. He knew he couldn’t lie to him when he was looking him in the eye. “Roan, promise me.”

He didn’t want to, but he couldn’t start denying him anything now. “I promise,” he said breathlessly, in complete defeat. If Paris was dead, did any promise he made to him matter? He honestly didn’t know.

Paris kissed him, hard and deep, and Roan knew this was it. He wanted to stop him, to break that fucking hypodermic, overpower him to stop him from doing it … but he was going to die. He had to respect that Paris wanted to do it this way, not wait for his final, fatal transformation to a tiger.

Roan was shaking as Paris finally showed the needle, and he realized that Paris was shaking too. “I love you,” Roan told him, and it was almost a plea.

Paris touched his face, stroked his cheek. “Oh sweetheart, I know. And you’re the only person I’ve ever loved. Remember that.” He then looked at his left arm, bared over the cover, and made a fist tight enough that a vein stood out in stark relief. With a hand now steady, he plunged the needle into the vein with the slightest hiss of pain, and injected the toxic drug into his bloodstream.

Roan grabbed his face and kissed him softly, trying not to cry and perfectly unable to stop. Paris let the empty needle drop on the carpet and kissed him back, looking at him with sleepy eyes. “If there’s an afterlife after all, I’ll see you there. I‘ll save you a good seat.” He laid back and closed his eyes, and Roan held him, unable to keep the tears from flooding out his eyes.

It should have been world shattering, something that came slamming down like a heavy mausoleum door, but that wasn’t how it happened. Roan laid there listening to Paris breathe, his breaths becoming shallower, his heart rate becoming slower. There was a muscle spasm, much like the kind you sometimes got inexplicably when falling asleep, and his breathing continued, but with more space between them.

And then, he simply stopped. He exhaled, and he just never inhaled again. Roan kept waiting for it, waiting for the thud of his heartbeat, but when he caught the faint but unmistakable scent of death from his skin he knew it was never going to happen. Paris was gone.

He sat up, looking down at him. Paris’s face was slack, peaceful, like he was sleeping … but Roan’s nose was telling him what his eyes refused to see. He couldn’t deny it. He threw back his head and screamed, a sound from the pit of his soul that quickly became a roar so savage and forceful that it didn’t just scour his throat but tore it up from the inside out. As the lack of oxygen finally made him stop, he could taste blood in the back of his throat.

He reached for the phone, feeling dizzy and disconnected, the tears finally drying as he called 911 and reported that his husband was dead. The operator tried to get specifics, but after giving his name and address he hung up. He pulled on his boxers and stumbled downstairs, hearing the phone ring as the operator called him back. He didn’t answer it. He just turned off the stereo - that was unexplainable to the cops - and collapsed on the sofa, feeling like an empty husk of a human being. He bet he was hollow now; he bet if you pushed on his chest, his ribcage would collapse.

He had no idea how long it was between the phone call and the siren screaming arrival of the ambulance; time had lost all meaning at this point. Nothing seemed real. Was he still sleeping? Maybe he was. He liked to believe he was.

A male and female duo of EMTs arrived, ones he vaguely recognized but couldn’t place, and then Dee in civilian clothes showed up and took over, telling them where to find the bedroom upstairs before gathering him in a solid embrace. “I’m so sorry, Ro,” he whispered, squeezing him tight. “I’m so sorry.”

How had Dee showed up so fast? He probably had alerted people to tell him if a call ever came in from this address; Dee had lots of friends. Had he gotten Paris his lethal injection? It probably didn’t matter; Paris could have gotten it anywhere. He had had lots of friends too.

Dee wasn’t the only one who had tagged his name and address, though. Gordo and Seb, their morning coffees still in their hands, showed up to take the standard report. This wasn’t a cat crime, this was the usual routine stuff done by beat cops, but he imagined that Gordo was trying to be kind to him. A further apology for how he sometimes used to treat him and Paris.

The official story was easy to report, and no one questioned it. Roan was vaguely aware that Paris, who had been sick and in a lot of pain lately, had gotten up this morning and retrieved a painkiller to help him sleep. Roan wasn’t sure what, as he was pretty much asleep, but he woke up a short time later, smelling death and finding Paris dead. It would have been a bizarre story for someone who didn’t know what being infected was like and who didn’t know about his sensitive nose, but Gordo and Seb knew, and they didn’t ask any further questions. If he’d known they were coming, there’d have been no need for him to remove all the other drugs from the house and hide them - they weren’t even going to attempt to search the place.

He was right. Both Gordo and Seb extended what seemed to be genuine sympathy as they closed their notebooks, and while Seb went to talk with the EMTs bringing Paris down the stairs, zipped inside a body bag atop a stretcher, Gordo asked Dee - who’d been sitting beside him the whole time he gave his bullshit account of how Paris had accidentally overdosed - if he was going to stay with him (like Roan wasn’t in the fucking room). Dee nodded and said he was, and Gordo nodded back before telling Roan to call if he needed anything. Gordo’s eyes could barely settle on his face before he quickly looked down at the carpet. Looking someone else’s grief in the face was one of the hardest part of the job.

They all left, save for Dee, whom he heard making a cell phone call, telling someone on the other end of the line that he was taking the day off and wouldn’t be in today. But Roan wasn’t rally listening as he let himself fall over on the couch, boneless as a doll, waiting for his body to die off as surely as his heart had. He wished he believed in an afterlife; he wished Paris really had too.

T.S. Eliot was right after all, and it wasn’t surprising, just disappointing. If he could have felt anything at all it might have made him sadder, but he felt nothing but empty and cold. A wasteland in humanoid form.

This was how the world ended. Not with a bang, but with a whimper.

Roan started the recorder in his coat pocket and folded his arms over his chest. He was tired of this. He was tired of this venal, stoned little man and his dirty sock smelling apartment, and he was tired of this whole sordid mess. Paris was dying; he was going to die. He wanted to be home with him, although he didn’t know what he would do if he was home. Lay next to him and listen to him breathe, just reassuring himself he was still alive? Sob uncontrollably, and hide in the shower until the hot water ran out and his skin was totally pruney? Take more pills until he could find the magic number that would make him stop feeling like the world was ending? “Was she upset over the end of the relationship?” he asked, deciding to reel this fish in and then club him over the head.

“We didn’t exactly have a relationship; we just hooked up a coupla times. But yeah, I guess she was upset about it.”

“And about being infected.”

He nodded like his neck was a loose spring, eager to play along with this scenario. “She said she was gonna kill herself, but I didn’t believe her. I mean, she was always a drama queen. But what woman isn’t, right?”

Roan shrugged, playing along with the sexism. “It’s the hormones.” He could imagine Murphy pulling out her taser and jabbing him in the neck with it, so he was glad she wasn’t going to hear this.

Gavin snorted in agreement. This penchant for snorting was starting to drive Roan up the fucking wall. What kind of annoying frat boy reject was he? “Yeah, must be. And Thora acted like she was always on the rag, y’know? Bitchy and always complaining.”

“What did she complain about?”

“What didn’t she complain about? Bitch, bitch, bitch.” Roan waited, and Gavin, feeling drunk and expansive, filled in the silence. “I mean, she knew goin’ in that no bitch is gonna tie me down, right? I’m a good lookin’ guy, okay? And I’m rich. Women throw themselves at me all the time. What am I, a monk?”

There was the motive. “And she was going to out you in her memoir, wasn’t she? As a lothario who was casually infecting women?”

He shrugged and shook his head at the same time. “Like anyone would have published that piece of shit. And people never believe anything in a blog.”

“Except the media.”

He rolled a single shoulder, and fidgeted anxiously. “Nobody would believe her. She was full of shit.”

“She was blackmailing you.” That was a guess, but one based on some experience.

Gavin stopped staring at the blank t.v. screen and looked at him sharply, sudden anger making him look almost sober. “She knew that I’d be disowned if my step-dad found out I was infected. The vindictive bitch knew it. She was gonna tell them about it and the drugs, and she knew I’d be cut off. Not only would I lose the money, but if Cliff did manage to get his ass elected - unlikely, but people are sheep - I’d lose out on that gravy train. The governorship ain’t shit, but Cliff’s an ambitious little prick, and all he needs to do is get his toe in the door and then he’s shooting for the top. And he’s just the kinda of oily hypocrite who always gets elected.”

“She was trying to sabotage your future. It was an attack.”

“Yes, exactly!” he agreed vehemently, sitting up. “She was threatening me. Since when is that legal?”

Roan wondered if he should tell him that knowingly having unprotected sex with an uninfected person when you knew you were infected was basically a felony assault charge - an attempted murder charge if you were tiger strain. But he wasn’t going to get him to continue digging his own grave if he was hostile towards him. “You were in a corner. What else could you do?”

“Right! I mean, shit, what would you have done?”

It was fun leading the witness, but the hard part was hiding your contempt. “Anyone who gets attacked lashes out. That’s just human nature.”

Gavin slapped his open hand down on the couch in enthusiasm as he bounced once, like a child given too much sugar and Ritalin. “Yeah! I mean, it was self-defense, basically.”

“She brought it on herself. She was asking for it.”

“She shouldn’t have threatened me,” he said, sounding sulky as he searched the coffee table for a bottle with some beer in it. “I know a lotta people think I’m stupid, but I’m not. She shoulda known better.”

Blaming the victim just never got old, did it? But this time it exhausted him. “What about Eric Chiang?”

That made him pause and look at him curiously. “Who?”

“The bartender at Panic. The one you stabbed.”

His pale eyes narrowed, and his look hardened, becoming belligerent in that special drunken way. “I didn’t stab nobody.”

“Did Eric threaten you?”

That made him scoff and go back to searching for a bottle with a drink left in it. “I thought you were cool.”

“I am. I’m just trying to understand what happened there. Thora got what she deserved, but I can’t see how Eric fits. Was he working with her?”

He sighed heavily, shaking a micro millimeter of alcohol in the bottom of a Jack Daniel’s bottle. “I dunno. Look, I’m sorry about the queer, all right? But there weren’t supposed to be any witnesses. He was gonna fuck things up.”

“And he wasn’t supposed to die violently, right? He was supposed to overdose on ecstasy.”

“Yeah, which is actually a fucking good way to go,” he said, gulping down the dribbles of Jack. “But that fucking man whore kept most of it for himself.”

“What do you expect of a hooker , though?”

That made Gavin snort humorously as he tossed the bottle aside. “Yeah, I guess I shoulda thought of that. But I felt kinda skeazy talking to him, like I could catch AIDS or the clap just by being within arm’s reach of him.”

“But you went to check on him. You must have suspected the hustler wasn’t trustworthy.”

He shrugged diffidently. “Something didn’t seem right about him. I thought it was because he was, you know, gay, but I figured out later he was probably tweaking. You can’t trust whores, but especially druggie whores.”

“Why didn’t you use a speedball on Eric like you did on Thora?”

“You know how expensive a good speedball is? I got connections; ecstasy was cheaper.”

The financially prudent murderer. If it wasn’t so repugnant, it might be admirable. “Well, thank you, Gavin. I think that’s enough.”

That made him look at him curiously, his eyes even more heavily glazed now. “What? What d’ya mean?”

“Enough of a confession. Thanks for your cooperation.”

Gavin was confused, his synapses so loaded down with booze and drugs that they were barely firing, but he still managed to call up a hostile look that Roan found queerly funny. (No pun intended.) “I didn’t confess to nothin’. What the fuck are you talking about?”

He repressed the urge to point out he’d used a double negative, and not for the first time, but what was the point? Wasn’t “Generation Y” the one without grammar? “I’ve been taping our conversation. It’ll make for an interesting soundtrack.”

His pale, dry lips curved up in a smug smile that would have made Roan hate him instantly if he didn’t hate him already. “That ain’t legally permissible. I didn’t say you could tape nothin’.”

“I’m not turning it over to the police, even though I should. It’d give them probable cause to arrest you, but you’re right, it’s inadmissible in court. Truth be told, I bet you have enough high priced lawyers to get out of anything thrown at you anyways.”

The smug smile increased, and he sat back against the couch, folding his arms behind his head. “You betcher ass.”

“So I’m sending the tape to Jay Bishop. Enjoy your life while you still have it.” Roan shoved himself off the wall and headed for the door.

He heard the couch springs squeak as Gavin shifted nervously, not getting up only because he wasn’t quite capable of standing. “ Wha’ ? What … what does that mean?”

At the door, he turned to look at him, and saw that the smugness had left his face, and he was struggling for logic underneath the blanket of alcohol. “You know, Thora’s hated older brother? He didn’t like Thora, but I think he’ll like her gloating murderer even less. You know I’ve heard he can destroy a person with a single phone call? And I believe it, because I’ve met him, and he’s a complete fucking sociopath. You two are perfect for each other. Too bad you both aren’t butt pirates, although, you want to talk drama queens? I’ve known some pirates that put most women to shame. They don’t call us queens for nothing.”

Gavin was still struggling to digest all this. He sat forward, his total befuddlement making him look ten years younger, a harmless pre-pubescent. “I don’t … Jay hated her. He’s not gonna care about this. C’mon.” His voice was uncertain, and at the end became pleading. He was now sober enough to be a little scared.

“I’m done here, and so are you.” He opened the door and stalked out, not waiting for a response, as he didn’t want to hear it. He’d heard enough shit from this asshole. He thought he heard him shout something through the door as he went down the hall, but all he heard was the voice; he couldn’t make out the words. It didn’t matter; he could probably guess what he said.

Once back in his car, he checked his phone. There was a message for him, which was Murphy, telling him that an arrest had been made in the rampaging Lincoln Navigator case: Trang Phan. No shock there. But she’d left a second message, saying there was a “new wrinkle” in the Parker Davis case, although she didn’t elaborate on what that was. He called her back.

For once, it seemed something had gone right. “Parker got himself an alibi,” Murphy explained. “The owner of the liquor store down on Fourth came in to complain to us about all the hookers who worked his parking lot from time to time, and as proof he brought in a few days’ worth of security camera footage. The night of Chiang’s murder - in fact, at the approximate time of his murder, according to the time stamp - Parker is clearly visible having a brief argument with the owner, who was telling him to get the hell away from his store. There’s no way Parker could have gotten from there back to Chiang’s apartment in time to stab him, not unless he had a helicopter or a teleporter, and he just ain’t that good of a hooker.”

Roan sighed in relief. He was worried what he was going to do about that, since homo hating Jay wouldn’t give a fuck about Eric or Parker. “That’s a stroke of luck for him, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, I know. He should probably thank his lucky stars that Kevin is so sharp eyed.”

He felt a sudden coldness settle in his stomach. “Kevin?”

“Yeah, the guy brought the tapes to Vice. Kevin humored him and watched them, and caught it. “

Roan suddenly knew what had happened. Kevin went about trying to retrace Parker’s steps, and found the liquor store and the security tapes - maybe Parker even remember having a fight with the store owner. Either way, Kevin found a way to spring him, and without casting any suspicions upon his motives for wanting to help him.

Oh god, Kevin hadn’t fallen in love with Parker, had he? It was bad enough if he was paying for sex from that drugged up train wreck of a human being; it was worse if he fell in love with someone who could never ever love him back, or even like him beyond a simple client - employee relationship. Paris was right in that Kevin was very lonely - there wasn’t a lot of room in the closet - but if true that was beyond sad. He had to talk to him, but he didn’t know what he would say to him.

Roan got off the phone before Murphy could get suspicious of his silences, and drove to the nearest messenger service headquarters. He rewound the tape and listened to it to make sure he got everything he needed - he had - and he cut off the discussion after thanking Gavin for his confession, taping nothing but the interior silence of the car afterwards. Jay didn’t need to know he was playing him for his sociopathic impulses, nor did he need to know that Roan was gay (which he had essentially admitted there at the end). Then he went inside the business and arranged or the package containing the tape to be dropped off at Jay’s office tonight. He included a note that simply said: ‘This is the only copy. The cops can’t touch him, but she was your family. Do what you want - I’m off the case.’

It wasn’t the only copy; he’d quickly duped a copy. But he’d destroy it if Jay did what he suspected he was going to do.

Was this legal? Hell no; this was vigilantism. But it was probably the only way that Thora and Eric could get anything close to justice.

Gavin was dumb. He thought he was hot shit, but he forgot that no matter how big and bad you were, there was always something bigger and badder out there - it was evolution in action. You might sit on top of the shit heap for a while, but sooner or later someone would come along who could easily knock you down, and then someone would come along and knock them down, ad nauseum. The Bishops were one family he shouldn’t have fucked with, but he was so arrogant it never occurred to him. He was probably certain he’d never get caught. Funny now, since being caught by the cops probably would have been kinder.

He watched the bike messenger take off with the envelope addressed to Jay, a lean young man with the muscular legs of a Tour de France participant, and Roan wondered how he could stand to wear shorts in this cold. Roan felt cold all the way to his toes, his blood becoming liquid nitrogen as he sat in his car and cranked up the heat. He entertained the idea that the cold was all in his head, psychosomatic. If Paris ever found out about this, he wouldn’t approve.

So he wasn’t going to tell him about it. It was the final lie, the one he would always keep to himself.

On the way home he stopped off and got some Korean fried chicken, japachae, and samgyetang from this little Korean restaurant that was a favorite of Paris’s, and then he ran by a store and bought some chocolate chip mint ice cream, a bottle of wine (he hated wine, but Paris loved it), and a pint of Ben and Jerry’s “Black and Tan” ice cream, which had become a new favorite of theirs. Stout ice cream? That shouldn’t have worked, but it was pure genius.

When he got home, Paris was vegged out in front of the t.v. watching an old Simpsons episode, conscious and awake but laying down, with the blue plaid blanket that usually covered the sofa covering him instead. He chuckled, and called out, “Hey, you’re missing one of your favorites - it’s a Troy McClure one.”

“Really? Damn. Well, at least they repeat them eight thousand times a month.” He paused by the heater register and turned it up to seventy four. It would be too warm for him, but it would be comfortable for Paris.

“True. You’ve got endless chances to catch it again.” He then sat up, sniffing. “Do I smell Korean fried chicken?”

“Wow, you are such a chow hound.”

He grinned, looking so handsome and happy it was easy to overlook how unnaturally flushed his face was, and the slight glitter of sweat on his brow. “I can smell a won ton from three hundred yards.”

Roan smirked as he put the bags of take out on the kitchenette and started putting the ice cream and the wine bottle in the freezer. “I know you’re joking, but I still believe it.”

He shucked off his jacket and started making up plates of food for both of them, telling Paris about the development in Parker’s case. He left out Kevin being Parker’s savior, as he still didn’t know what he was going to do with this knowledge. He also told Par that he knew that Gavin Lorimer had killed Thora and Eric because Thora was threatening to out his infected status to his step-father, who would cut him off entirely from the family money tit, but since he had no actionable proof yet he had no idea what he was going to do with the information. Paris insisted he should at least call Murphy and let her know, and he agreed to, but he really didn’t know if he would or not. He wanted to wait to see what Jay’s initial reaction would be first.

Once the wine was chilled, he agreed to have a glass of it with Paris even though he didn’t like it, just because he lied and said he’d never tried white wine before, just the red. When he came back with the bottle and the glasses, Paris peered at him curiously. “Should you? Your pupils look a little big.”

So he knew he’d popped a Vicodin before he left. Again, Paris saw right through him, which could be as endearing as it was inconvenient and annoying. At least if he knew he was lying about Gavin, he hadn’t called him on it. “It’s worn off by now.”

Paris studied him carefully with his brilliant blue eyes, his scrutiny belied by the weariness he could see in them. “If your migraines are getting this bad again, maybe you should take a couple days off.”

And now he was giving him an out. He might have teared up in gratitude if he himself wasn’t exhausted. “Yeah, I was thinking about doing that. I guess, since I’ve already solved the case, there’s no harm in it.”

Paris flashed him a sad but warm smile, raising his wine glass in a mock toast. “That’s the spirit.”

“Paris,” he said loudly, giving him a light smack on the cheek. Did that ever wake anyone up? “Paris! Can you hear me?”

He’d just pulled out his cell phone when Paris moved, letting out a small sigh, and Roan waited anxiously as his eyelids fluttered open. For a moment he stared up at the ceiling, his eyes slowly coming back into focus. “Why am I on the floor?” Then his eyes scudded over to his face, and he gasped. “And how did you get that bruise? Did you get in a fight?”

“I’m okay. What happened to you?”

Paris sat up, and Roan helped him, helping him lean against the couch. “Nothing happened to me,” he claimed, although he noted with a scowl that he was sitting on the floor. “Look, I just … I felt dizzy, I figured it was a caffeine rush, so I was gonna sit down …”

“And you didn’t make it,” Roan guessed, filling in the rest of the sentence for him. Paris still looked abnormally pale, and it looked like a bit of sweat was starting to gather at his hairline. He put a hand on his face, this time feeling it, not just smacking it. “You’re hot.”

“Well, duh.”

“No, I mean you feel feverish. Maybe I should call Dee.”

Par fixed him with a stern, almost paternal glare. “I have a temperature. Big whoop. It’s not a national emergency.”

“It is if you passed out.”

Par reached up and touched his face, letting his thumb trace the area just beneath the bruise. It took everything in Roan not to wince, as there was just a little bit of pain, even though Paris was being very gentle. The heat seemed to be radiating from his hand. “Maybe we should call Dee for you.”

He frowned at him, aware of what he was doing. “It’s a bruise; I need an ice pack. You know it’ll be gone in a couple of days. When you start collapsing for no reason, though, it’s time to call in the experts.”

The look on Paris’s face morphed into something he really didn’t want to see. It was a mixture of pity and love, sorrow and sympathy, all conflicting with a slightly feverish glaze in his eyes. “Hon, you know as well as I do if I go to a hospital now, I’m never coming out again. I don’t want to die in a hospital.”

Something tightened in his throat. He really didn’t want to hear this. “Don’t say that.”

“What? It’s the truth, I don’t. And I don’t have a lot of time left here.”

“Please stop.”

Paris’s hand smoothed down his face, and came to rest on his shoulder as he sighed wearily. “I wanted to talk about this last night, but I chickened out. I guess now’s as good a time as any to finally mention it. I’m not going to survive another transition -”

“Paris - “

“ - no, listen. I’m running out of time, and I don’t want to die as a tiger in a cage. I was born Human and I want to die one.”

Roan grabbed Par’s arm, feeling the lean but still hard muscle of his bicep. He could remember when he couldn’t quite fit his hand all the way around Paris’s upper arm, but now he could. But it only bothered him because he knew what was no longer there. He was fighting back tears, because he knew what was coming, what Paris was going to ask him, and while he had half expected it, it still wasn’t something he thought he could handle. “You can’t ask me this, Par. I’m not sure I can do it.”

“I’m not asking you to do anything; I wouldn’t put that burden on you. I just want you to be there with me,”

“Of course. I’m not going anywhere.” He moved in for a hug then, mainly so Paris didn’t see him struggling not to cry. If he lost it now, he would be all fucked up for the rest of the day, and he still had a murder to solve and a fucked up hustler to get out of jail. None of it was important as Paris was, though, not to him. And Paris had already worked out how he was going to die. While he was off bugging the shit out of people, he was here figuring out how - and probably when - he was going to die. It made everything else seem silly and pointless.

Paris hugged him back fiercely, and he bet he knew how hard this was for him. It certainly couldn’t have been easy for Par either. God, what was he going to do without him? He couldn’t think about that now either, or he couldn’t function. A couple of tears slipped past his eyelids, but he managed to hold the rest back.

After a moment where they just held each other, the heat coming from Paris sickly and uncomfortable (at what point did a fever become dangerous?), Paris asked, “So how did you get that bruise?”

Damn it. He should have known he wasn’t going to get out of it that easy.

****

Roan got Paris to go upstairs and lay down, and even gave him the ice pack because fuck it, Paris needed it more. As soon as he was gone, Roan shotgunned a beer, aware that using alcohol to numb your emotions wasn’t recommended by anyone, but right now he needed the numbness. He contemplated taking another Vicodin, yet decided to just to stick with alcohol for the moment. But his head was starting to ache from unshed tears, so maybe he was going to hit the pills anyways.

A background search on Gavin Lorimer showed he was clean record wise, and came from an interesting family. His father was apparently some big time agent down in L.A., although he split with Gavin’s mother when Gavin was four years old. When he was fifteen she married a lawyer with political ambitions, Clifford Braben, who was currently on the city council and gathering capitol for a run at the governor’s office. Braben was pretty conservative, a real right wing prick, so maybe it wasn’t a shock that he and Gavin didn’t get along. Wouldn’t the news that his step-son was arrested for drunken driving with cocaine in his car paint him as a hypocrite, since he was major zero tolerance on drugs? It wasn’t on his file, though - charges had never been leveled against Gavin. Presumably Braben’s connections made sure it all went away in exchange for shipping Gavin off to Willow Springs; Thora had said as much in her memoir. If Gavin wanted to embarrass his step-father, he must have been disappointed.

A Lexus-Nexus search turned up some awful sound bites of Braben’s that he tried hard not to read. Oh good, he hated gays, and on top of that he thought all infected should not only be registered with the local health department, but that they should all live in special “complexes” that would spare the uninfected from being subjected to exposure or cat attack. Would he call them zoos? Perhaps cat houses - now that would be funny. He closed the browser window, because Braben wasn’t the focus of the search.

Or was he? Gavin’s family might prove relevant to his state of mind and personality. It might also explain why he didn’t live at home. Maybe he couldn’t stand Braben, maybe Cliff didn’t want to share space with a fuck up who could only be a detriment to his political aspirations, or perhaps the truth was somewhere in between. He needed to talk to Gavin, if only to establish why he broke up with Thora, and how ugly the break up was.

He called Paradiso to see if Gavin was in the bar, but so far not yet, or the bartender was lying for him. He then searched online for fevers, and discovered it was a symptom of auto-immune disorders, along with dizziness, fatigue, and malaise - all symptoms Paris had had for some time. Roan listened carefully, making sure Paris wasn’t moving about upstairs, but then ducked into the downstairs bathroom anyways and called Dee on his cell phone.

“Better be important, Ro,” he answered, his voice fractured due to the crackling of static on the line. “I’m reading someone’s blood pressure here.”

So he was on shift now. Because of that, he decided to cut to the chase. “Does Paris have an auto-immune disorder?”

There was a long quiet moment, broken up only by bursts of static, and he was beginning to think that the connect had dropped off when Dee sighed. “Probably, yeah. Eventually the body rebels against the virus, but it overreacts, and it’s too late anyways. It starts destroying itself in an effort to save itself; the ultimate in self-destruction.” He heard him say faintly, off the phone, “One fifty over ninety.”

“Is there anything that could be done for him?”

“Paris? Well, you could get some immune suppressors, but I really wouldn’t recommend it. He’s just too weak for them.” There was another long pause. “I’m gonna hate myself for saying this, but Ro, you gotta start letting go. He’s … this is it for him. Paris knows this; he’s accepted this with a lot more dignity and grace than I could ever manage.”

He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. He didn’t know if he was angry or disgusted or simply scared. “Since when do you give up so easily?”

“I’m not giving up, I’m being realistic. You know I’d do anything for Paris if I thought there was anything I could do. But there isn’t anything I can do, and there’s nothing you can do either. You can’t save him, Ro. You need to stop trying before it starts killing you too.” There was a noise in the background, but the connection was so cut through with static he couldn’t tell what it was. “I’ve gotta go, this guy is going into v-tach. I’ll call you later.” He hung up abruptly, but Roan didn’t blame him - he was working, and the only time you should call a paramedic was when he was off the job or on a break. People could die if they got distracted.

Roan folded up his phone and tossed it on the counter next to the sink. If Dee said nothing could be done for him, then there was nothing that could be done. He needed to accept that; he needed to come to grips with it. Paris had accepted it, so why couldn’t he? Because he didn’t want Paris to die? Because he hated feeling so helpless? Because he couldn’t stand the pain of such a slow, inevitable loss? Because everyone he loved died horribly?

He didn’t know, and he didn’t want to focus on it because it hurt all the more.

He opened the bathroom cabinet and pulled out the Vicodin bottle, popping a tablet before he could think too much about it.

****

He was feeling good and numb by the time he returned to Paradiso. Luckily a different maitre’d was on duty, and let him peek into the lush bar, which was full of highly polished wood, burgundy draperies that had the soft distortion of silk, pale golden light, and gleaming reflective surfaces. It looked like a great place to get loaded, as long as you didn’t mind getting overcharged for your drinks. Gavin was nowhere to be found.

Roan drove back to Hillfield, suddenly wondering if Thora and Eric had been the only victims. What if they were the only found victims? The bay only occasionally gave up bodies - there was a lot of debris on the bottom, refuse of sunken ships and detritus heaved into the water, that could snag a corpse and hold it. It was possible that Gavin was taken out the same night as Thora, only no one had reported him missing, and the body hadn’t turned up yet. The new, friendlier maiter’d had told him Gavin hadn’t showed up at the bar the last couple of days, and that was unusual to say the least.

He buzzed Gavin’s apartment, but there was no reply. As he was doing that, a middle aged brunette woman in a thick blue quilted jacket came up, and she was a resident, as she used her key to get in the door. He stood aside as she went in, giving her a friendly smile, and then, just before the door closed all the way, he grabbed it. He waited a minute for her to vacate the lobby, then went inside.

The lobby was dingy, and looked like a thousand other sad little apartment lobbies he had seen in his life. He expected it to smell like pee, but it smelled like cigarette smoke, enchiladas, and burnt tuna casserole. Rather than take the small and frankly dangerous looking elevator, he was so tired from his booze and drugs combination that he decided to take the stairs up to Gavin’s floor. He noticed the stairwell was remarkably cold, almost colder than it was outside. Roan thought he smelled snow out there, in the sharp, dry air, and even though it was a bit early for it, he bet they were in for some. Maybe Paris would get to see it. He may have been Canadian, but he still liked snow, mainly because it gave him the chance to say, “You call this snow? Pussies.” (Of course Paris was from suburban Vancouver not the Yukon, but if this production made him happy, who was he to piss on his parade?)

Gavin’s apartment was at the end of a long hallway that smelled like spaghetti with an undertone of pot smoke. It was poorly lit and narrow, with a worn burnt orange carpet that could have been a reject from a swinging ‘70’s halfway house. He knocked loudly on Gavin’s apartment door, and announced, “Pizza delivery!”

It took a moment, but he thought he heard something thud to the carpet inside the apartment. Now he knew Gavin - or someone - was home, and they knew they had given themselves away. A muffled voice finally slurred, “Wha‘? I din’ order no pizz.” It was a male voice, and either stunned with a head injury or drunk off his ass.

“According to the order slip, I’ve got a pizza for Gavin, extra large pepperoni and sausage thin crust.” Oddly enough, this seemed fun. It was probably the Vicodin.

There were more stumbling noises, and then the voice, closer to the door, said, “I didn’ order a pizza! I don’ even like sausage …” Roan heard the sound of locks being thrown, and the door creaked open like a coffin lid. “Bu’ as long as yer -”

He came face to face with Gavin Lorimer. His face was flushed with alcohol, and puffy as well, his grey eyes watery and glazed in his handsome actor’s visage. He had a strong jaw and a dimpled chin, currently covered with a light fuzz of stubble, and it was easy to see what women saw him … well, when he was cleaned up. But it was clear he hadn’t bathed in at least a day, and his dishwater blond hair hung down in greasy strands, slightly curly from being uncombed and unwashed. He wore a dark blue tank top and khaki walking shorts, both of which hung on him like someone else’s clothes.

The scent hit Roan so hard he took a step back. It was body odor, sure, but that wasn’t the startling thing - the startling thing was the reek of cat all over him, feline musk oozing through his pores. He smelled like a lion, and Roan felt the lion in him wanting to roar, to establish dominance over this interloper. Gavin scanned Roan in confusion, and when he brought his eyes back to his face, Roan could see his pupils were so large that his irises were slender rings. “Where’s th’ pizza?”

“You’re infected,” Roan said, even though it was the most obvious thing to say. “You’ve transformed recently, haven’t you? That’s why people haven’t seen you lately.”

Gavin stared at him, panic flashing quickly across his mannequin face. He was just too drunk and too drugged to get worked up about it. “Who the fuck are you? I ain’t infected! I’m not - “

“Yes, you are. I can smell you. You’re a lion. Did you just come back to consciousness a couple hours ago, is that it? You haven’t showered yet. The smell of the cat is all over you.”

“Yer full of shit,” he slurred, then reached out, grabbed a fistful of his shirt, and yanked him into his apartment. Roan let him, because that’s where he wanted to be. Gavin shut the door heavily, mainly because he was leaning against it. He could barely stand. “Who the fuck are you?” he whispered harshly. “How d’ya know?”

“My name is Roan McKichan, I’m a private investigator looking into Thora Bishop’s death, and holy fuck, you infected her, didn’t you?”

Gavin’s apartment was a sad affair, a bachelor p ad all the way: the furniture was all Goodwill and sparse, with his stereo shelves just planks of wood held up and apart by concrete blocks, and his wooden coffee table hidden beneath about a dozen empty beer and Jack Daniels bottles. He had a calendar with topless models on it, which really must have impressed the females, but Roan had a feeling that he didn’t do a lot of entertaining here. What he assumed was the bedroom door was hollow core metal, meaning it was probably where he barricaded himself when the change came on.

Gavin glared at him, trying to muster some rage through the heavy blanket of painkilling drugs. “She prob’ly gave it to me, the bitch.”

“What about Danae?” he wondered, feeling like pieces of the puzzle were starting to click together. “Is that why she went to France - supposedly - and hasn’t been seen since? Did you infect her too? How many women have you infected, Gavin?”

“I haven’t -” he began, shouting, but then he paused, as he realized his voice might carry through the walls. He visibly steeled himself, then tried again, this time achieving a softer voice. “ - it isn’t like that. I don’ know who had it first, or who gave it to who. Okay? Don’t blame me.”

“But female to male transmission is rare.” Yes, Paris was infected that way, but that woman had figured out how best to do it, and did it deliberately. She was pretty psychotic from being infected, and he wanted to blame her, as it was a horrible thing to do to someone, but somewhere in his heart of hearts, he could understand it. He didn’t approve of it, but he knew where that impulse came from. You couldn’t take out your rage on the virus, so you took it out on others.

He snorted in a kind of laugh and staggered over to the worn, swayback brown corduroy sofa. He tripped before he got there and ended up collapsing on it, but that seemed to suit Gavin just fine. Not only was he completely wasted, but he was still trying to find his coordination through the remaining pain. His change back to Human must have been very recent indeed. “Yeah, well, I got it somehow, didn’t I?”

“Have you ever used intravenous drugs?”

He snorted again, and snagged a beer bottle off the table. Apparently they weren’t all empties. “Do I look like some smack head?”

He glanced at Gavin’s bare arms. He didn’t see any track marks, but then again, he could have shot up in more unobtrusive places. The smart junkies did. “I wasn’t aware there was a look.”

“Yeah, there is. Haven’t you ever heard of heroin chic?”

Roan leaned against the nearest wall, tired, but not desperate enough to attempt to sit in one of the few rickety chairs he had scattered haphazardly around his messy apartment. “Have you had unprotected homosexual sex?”

This time he got a snort and a laugh. “I ain’t no butt pirate.”

Roan felt the urge to say, ”Arr matey, prepare to be boarded,”, but somehow managed to repress the urge. It was still hard not to giggle, though. Still, he wasn’t getting anywhere with this line of questioning, and frankly Gavin was so reeking from cat and sweat and alcohol that it was impossible to say if he was lying or not. “Did you know you were infected when you slept with Thora?”

“No. I ain’t like that.” He swigged down the rest of his beer and tossed the empty bottle aside. It landed on the opposite end of the couch and bounced once before falling to the floor. Gavin didn’t seem to notice or care.

“But you didn’t use a condom?”

Gavin fixed him with a disdainful glare. “What the fuck are you, my sex ed teacher?”

“It might have prevented you from being infected, and from infecting others.”

He shrugged. “Doesn’t matter now. I think I do wanna pizza now. You wanna get the fuck outta here?”

Roan studied him as the boy limply reached for his telephone, his limbs like rubber, and he realized it all did click, didn’t it? At the end of the day, was there anything more scandalous than a family member riddled with a disease of known perverts and drug addicts? “I will, as soon as you answer a question for me.”

Gavin huffed a sigh impatiently through his nose, his eyes slowly gliding over towards him. “What?”