“That’s where they’d gone right after the train station, where Malcolm (Malcolm!) had poured his bloody heart out and begged Owen not to leave. Bed. There would be time to hammer out the details later”

“Malcolm chuckled wickedly. "You, my American friend, are like a hidden landmine of sex appeal. I'm going to have to look out for you.""Too late." Owen raised his face to the unfamiliar smells, breezes, sounds of the city, enjoying them even more now that he knew something of it and it had become personal to him. "I've already exploded. You're caught."He tilted his head back and laughed, inviting Malcolm to share the joke, but Malcolm was unusually quiet.....”

“He tasted like gingermint and chocolate kulfi and something stronger and more powerful, something like want and need, and Owen drank him in and gave him back, dying for him in the subjective three hours it took to get to Malcolm's door.”

“Kindness is not weakness, Malcolm. Forgiveness isn’t lack of backbone. Forgiveness is the thing that lets human beings not strangle each other after a half an hour’s acquaintance. It’s not something you in particular should shit on, you know?”

“They made love until Chris had to leave for the airport, without sleeping at all. After Chris had left, wearing wrinkled jeans and Xander’s sweat and seed on his skin, Xander flopped back onto the bed and looked miserably at the clock.”

“Maybe that’s why his lovers hadn’t worked out so far. Maybe before you got someone who would fight to have you, you had to be ready to kill or die for them first.”

“....and his head and shoulders were on the bed next to the boy who had captured his heart like cupped hands would capture a butterfly, and had never, ever clutched him too tight and never let him go.”