“He was dead. However, his nose throbbed painfully, which he thought odd in the circumstances.”

“To this point, he could not really have said that he loved William. Feel the terror of responsibility for him, yes. Carry thought of him like a gem in his pocket, certainly, reaching now and then to touch it, marveling. But now he felt the perfection of the tiny bones of William’s spine through his clothes, smooth as marbles under his fingers, smelled the scent of him, rich with the incense of innocence and the faint tang of shit and clean linen. And thought his heart would break with love.”

“Go to bed, Tom," he managed to say. "Don't wake me in the morning. I plan to be dead.”

“I would not piss on him was he burning in the flames of hell," Grey said politely.One of Hal's brows flicked upward, but only momentarily."Just so," he said dryly. "The question, though, is whether Fraser might be inclined to perform a similar service for you."Grey placed his cup carefully in the center of the desk."Only if he thought I might drown," he said, and went out.”

“I was crying and laughing, snuffing tears and blood, bumping at him with my bound hands, trying awkwardly to thrust them at him so that he could cut the rope. He quit grappling, and clutched me so hard against him that I yelped in pain as my face was pressed against his plaid. He was saying something else, urgently, but I couldn’t manage to translate it. Energy pulsed through him, hot and violent, like the current in a live wire, and I vaguely realized that he was still almost berserk; he had no English.”

“Do you know,' he said again softly, addressing his hands, 'what it is to love someone, and never - never! - be able to give them peace, or joy, or happiness?'He looked up then, eyes filled with pain. 'To know that you cannot give them happiness, not through any fault of yours or theirs, but only because you were not born the right person for them?”

“He thought of such places in a way that had no words, only recognizing one when he came to it. He might have called it holy, save that the feel of such a place had nothing to do with church or saint. It was simply a place he belonged to be, and that was sufficient.”