Someone was sobbing.

Laurie came back from the abyss to a blinding headache and a throat so sore she could barely speak. She was lying on her back on her bed, limbs splayed like a discarded mannequin. Slowly, painfully, she brought her knees up and rolled onto her side. Through her crippling temporal pain she saw Brahms crumpled against the wall, his head on his knees.

With great effort she raised herself on one elbow and croaked, "Brahms..."

His head snapped up. Brahms's eyes were so red from crying they looked blistered. Crablike, he scuttled over to her, reaching for her. She watched as he laid his forehead to her hands. His body trembled as he cried. Then she saw the blood streaming down his face and neck, the clotted gore in his hair. Her heart sank. Did I do that?

"Brahms?"

Slowly, he rallied, staring up at her.

"You're bleeding." Laurie gently parted the hair at his right temple, gasping at what she saw. His scalp was rent by a four inch gash. Some of the glass from the crystal pitcher must have rebounded and hit him. She hadn't been good to him.

"I thought you were dead," he intoned. "I thought I'd killed you."

Laurie gave him a lopsided smile. "I thought you'd killed me too. I have the headache from Hades and a throat like a badger's ass!"

She stared at the droplets of blood on the carpet. "We have to get you cleaned up and that wound attended. And I need some something for this headache."

Brahms knelt miserably before her, avoiding her eyes. Laurie marvelled at his duality, the capricious volatile nature of him. She'd crossed a line with him, albeit a precarious and unpredictable one. But for every action there was always a reaction. Although he'd shown her his fury and outrage at the invasion of his personal space, she'd actually been the one who'd attacked him. Ripping out his hair, kicking his shins, gouging his skin and slicing his head open with glass. She closed her eyes and exhaled shakily. What state would he have been in if that pitcher had hit him full on? She might have killed him.

"What a pair, huh?" she said with a mirthless laugh. "Death by strangulation and water jug."

"I'm sorry, Laurie."

"So am I," she murmured. "Come, let's go clean ourselves up."

~

She stitched his head with a boiled needle and thread being as gentle as she could. He didn't flinch once at her clumsy work, but he'd refused to go to hospital and it was the only avenue left to her.

"I've had to clip away your hair round the cut, and I'm going to slather some antibacterial gel on there so hold still coz this'll hurt!"

Brahms gave a soft "aah" as the gel bit. "How's your headache?" he murmured.

"Getting better. But I'm gonna sound like Mercedes McCambridge for a while."

"Who's that?"

She snickered to herself. "She was an actress who smoked ninety a day."

She sat down and watched him make coffee. "You'll need to shower to get that blood off your neck but you need to keep the wound dry. Last thing we want is you getting any infection."

He sat down and stared across at her for a long moment. "I wanted to kill you," he said at last.

Laurie heard the gravity in his voice. She whispered, "Why didn't you?"

"I don't know."

"You didn't want to then...not really."

"You hurt me and I felt humiliated you'd seen how I used to live."

"Brahms--"

"I have a terrible rage in me, Laurie. One day, I might not be able to stop it."

She shook her head. "Don't say that, Brahms."

"My parents loved me too much."

"How can anyone be loved too much?"

He considered her question with a slight tilt to his head. "I was tethered to my mother's fears."

At her expression, he explained further. "You think I don't know what I am? How I've lived? What they let me become? You think I can't hold up the mirror and take stock of myself? I used to rage in there, Laurie. Behind those walls. Rage and smash things up. But I was frustrated. I knew what was out there. I watched tv, I watched the news. I saw how people lived and loved and hated. I wanted to be a part of it but I couldn't. I didn't know how."

'Oh, Brahms..."

"I wasn't allowed to have friends. Nobody was good enough for me. I'm better than them all...or so my mother told me." He leaned forwards. Under the pitiless kitchen spots his scars were livid, and the pupils of his eyes seemed too small. "All I felt as a child, or hoped to feel as an adult, was vicarious. I lived through the lens of my parents and what I saw through the screen. They were my only reality."

Laurie blinked but could think of nothing to say.

"I see you wondering about me, Laurie. You're thinking, how can he live with knowing the workings of his own psyche?" Brahms grinned and his scars writhed. "I've seen the Silence of the Lambs too, you know."

"Don't even joke about it!" She countered angrily.

"The world is full of people like me, Laurie. They're just better at hiding it."

And what does that make me, she wanted to cry. What kind of warped am I?

At her crestfallen scowl, he said gently, "You're special, Laurie. That's what you are."

She looked up sharply. How did he know what she was thinking? Was she so transparent? So easy to read? Hadn't Joel always said that. But this man wasn't Joel. Joel hadn't lived Brahms's life but he was still a violent controlling psycho.

Laurie knew Brahms was absorbing her heart, insidiously and irresistibly. She knew he'd never let her go. And she'd allowed it. God help her, she was allowing it. How had it come to this? Mr Heelshire's words answered in her head ...little by little, then all at once...